You might think he's doing something else. But in reality, he's learning how to sit/stay, and not doing a very good job of it (he eventually learned how to do so beautifully ... sort of ).

martedì 25 gennaio 2011

to a porcupine


The Scallion is burying a porcupine as I write. She was discovered this morning on the usual pup walk (that means the adult dogs; puppers can barely handle the terrace), they found her on a path in the woods. Lulu managed to get to her, and the Scallion had to remove a quill from her mouth.

(Lulu is dumb. Just last week I had to remove a thorned twig of the recently-pruned-but-hadn’t-made-it-to-the-compost-pile Banks rose from her muzzle. We went into the woods, Lulu stopping her run to drag her head along the ground and mash her paw violently on her muzzle; I could find nothing in her mouth. We returned home, she was breathing fine, I went to the kitchen to find blood everywhere. Re-opened her mouth, saw thorned twig breaching the roof of her mouth. Taking a big, deep breath, I yanked it. She was fine, though had yogurt and pappa (in this case, reconstituted with water dried Tuscan bread for dinner that night.)

The Scallion returned the pups, took the wheelbarrow, and put the poor creature in it. Back at the house, he asked me if I wanted to see it.

She was a lovely animal (we know she was a she because we checked). Four prominent, practically fanged teeth, two on top, two on bottom. Paws that looked like they were part of a child’s stuffed toy. An ear that looked like it could belong to that child holding the stuffed toy.

Porcupines, according to Wiki, are the third largest rodents in the world (capybaras and beavers are bigger). Our porcupine was probably about two feet tall/long, with a dark coat, and white quills. We don’t know how she died. A gash on her neck, and foam at her nose (which would, of course, indicate poison) were the only indications of something gone seriously awry. We wondered if a wild boar had gotten to her, as wild boars forage in these woods (multitudinous signs of rooting appear; they are rummaging with their long, big noses for Jerusalem artichokes). Other web sources say that a type of weasel (the fisher) attacks porcupines by repeatedly having at their faces. Our porcupine’s face was mercifully undisturbed (except for that foam), and weasels don’t live in this part of the world.

Another possibility is the horned owl, of which there are many. But she was simply too large for an owl to cart away.

We discussed what to do next. The dumpster down the road was the easiest solution but, looking at her, we thought she deserved something more respectful. So the Scallion will be burying her with the remains of the Banks rose.

And then there’s a chicken head in a pot on my stove. What a lovely surprise after seeing a dead porcupine. I had forgotten this when attempting to strain the broth made last night. It’s early morning, and one of its reptilian feet had broken the surface of what will undoubtedly be a fantastic broth (thanks to the feet and head). Like the burial of the porcupine, the task of straining the broth will fall to the Scallion.

Mother Nature today somehow feels too overwhelming.

On our kitchen table are six eggs, a gift from neighbors via my mother-in-law. Straw is still attached to some of them. We got them yesterday, the day they were laid.
Dinner tonight? Zuppa pavese, a simple yet elegant dish (Elizabeth David: “.. it is a capital invention”).

The origins of this are fun, but probably not true. Waverley Root writes that a young peasant girl enriched a simple consommé with an egg before serving it to Francis I of France, who had been taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia. He liked it so much that he took the recipe back with him to France a year later when he was freed.

[This sounds like a prequel to the other culinary myth that Catherine de’Medici took her chefs with her when she married Henry, thus imparting the glories of Italian cuisine to the clueless French. But by this account, her future father-in-law beat her to it.]

You can either poach the egg in the broth, then pour it over the buttered toast. Or you can put the buttered toast in a deep soup tureen, put just the egg yolk on top, and pour the hot broth over it. This is advocated by Root, who then adds, in a parenthetical aside, “Persons inexpert at separating yolks often use the whole egg.”

Ada Boni goes for the whole egg approach, put on top of the buttered toast, the hot broth then is poured over it.

Zuppa Pavese/Soup from Pavia

4 slices of Tuscan bread
4 organic eggs
2-3 T. butter
¼ c. Parmesan, grated
3 c. chicken broth
White truffle, grated, if you’re blessed

Bring the broth to a boil.

In a saucepan, melt the butter, and brown the slices of bread (which you’ve cut in half) in said. Put the bread slices in two deep soup tureens, poach the eggs, remove with a spatula from the bubbling broth, and place carefully on top of the toast. Pour the broth over, and eat.

The possible inclusion of grated white truffle is not part of this classic recipe. But wouldn’t it taste swell?

ADDENDA

Elizabeth David, Italian Food, Middlesex, 1954.
Waverley Root, The Food of Italy, New York, 1971,
Ada Boni, La Cucina Regionale Italiana, Roma, 1985.

From Wikipedia.org: “The Battle of Pavia, fought on the morning of February 24, 1525, was the decisive engagement of the Italian War of 1521-26. A Spanish-Imperial army under the nominal command of Charles de Lannoy (and working in conjunction with the garrison of Pavia, commanded by Antonio de Leyva) attacked the French army under the personal command of Francis I of France in the great hunting preserve of Mirabello outside the city walls. In the four-hour battle, the French army was split and defeated in detail. The French suffered massive casualties, including many of the chief nobles of France; Francis himself, captured by the Spanish troops, was imprisoned by Charles V and forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Madrid, surrendering significant territory to his captor. The outcome of the battle cemented Spanish Habsburg ascendancy in Italy.”

Happy Birthday, Virginia Woolf!

martedì 18 gennaio 2011

Chewing Dogs

Why do puppies chew? Why do puppies go exactly where they’re not supposed to, even if you’ve barricaded the no-go-to zones?

While pondering these impenetrables, I googled “why puppies chew” and came up with 2,780,000 hits. Evidently this is a major world-wide preoccupation. Googling “why puppies chew things you don’t want them to” revealed 11,000,000 hits.

What have they chewed? Their first major coup was the cover of the Bronzino catalogue from the magnificent drawings exhibition at the Met last year. Their second? They nibbled the corner of Vasari’s Lives (1568 ed.). They appear to be a bookish lot, and we happen to have a whole lot of books for them to … um … peruse. Just this afternoon I pulled Noah Feldman’s Fall and Rise of the Islamic State from their greedy little jaws.

From peteducation.com : “Puppies chew on whatever they can get their mouths on for any number of reasons: they are bored, they have a lot of energy, they are teething, or they are just curious. Dogs learn through their mouths. It is their tool; it is how they receive a great deal of information. They are naturally inclined to use their mouths whenever they can.” Peteducation.com then counsels puppy proofing areas, which we have dutifully done. But being imaginative pups, and dogged pups, they have managed to get into most places they’re not supposed to (who knew, for example, that they would crawl under the armchair, the aperture being only about two inches)? Funny how puppies can insert themselves into spaces you hardly thought possible.

The next bit of advice? “Confine your pup in a crate.” Yes, we have, but Yip discovered how to vault her way out of it (she combines fine athleticism with her chewing habits), thus causing us to literally put a lid on it (the lid, in this case, being the remains of an addition to an old family dining table).

Then “closely supervise your uncrated pup.” Ah, we do, but there’s three of them, and it’s hard to multi-task.

Peteducation continues: “Give your puppy chew toys.” Oh, we have, but why chew on the expensive rope gadget from a shop in Florence when you can chew on something far more interesting like the cardboard cylinder remaining after you’ve used up all the paper towels (which, of course, have been used to clean up after them). Besides, chewing on people is a whole lot more fun: just ask Yip, Yap, and Yup. It’s heaven when they’re all present in the same spot, as they are right now chewing on the wicker waste basket.

My favorite, however, is this: (again, from peteducation) :” If you catch your puppy in the act of chewing anything but his chew toy, remove the object and replace it with an acceptable chew toy. If your puppy then chews on the toy, praise him. You always want to reinforce desired behavior with praise. If possible, treat the 'inappropriate object' with a product designed to deter chewing, such as Grannick's Bitter Apple or Drs. Foster and Smith Chew Stop that will give it a bad taste.”

First off, we have Bitter Bite, in aerosol form. It appears to work as an aphrodisiac for them or a tonic; seconds after the book has been sprayed, they’re right back at it. We attempt to follow the advice above, but experience has shown that you remove pup(s) from Forbidden Object, and direct him/her/usually them to Appropriate Object. This keeps them busy for – oh, three seconds – before they return to the Forbidden Object.

Two large dogs live with us, and they would be perfect to chew on, if only the two large dogs could be bothered with three small puppers. They couldn’t. Lulu never properly learned to play with others; she entered our pack when Waldo was already installed. She learned to play with him (if you can count him hanging out underneath her and nipping at her hind paws, and her ending the discussion by sitting on him) but not with others. Today she made a couple of clumsy attempts to engage a pup in play (her coordination was equal to that of a center for the Boston Celtics attempting to do a plié). These attempts cowed the pups, caused Harry to howl … well, you should have been here.

Harry could not be bothered with them, though he has conducted innumerable site inspections of each pup – particularly Yup (the only other boy). It’ll be a great day when they start trying to out-pee one another; hopefully, the camera will be ready.

Outdoors, the puppers have attempted to massacre the Chinese mustard greens and bok choi. If they massacre that, I will massacre them (for those of you who don’t live in Italy: those two vegetables do not exist in this country; these are from seeds illegally brought in by Dogaressa of the Broken Halo and are, as such, treasures).

They’re killing the lavender. In fact, their choice of it as their outdoor commode has led others (named Lulu, Harry, and Rosie), to spend their pennies there, too.
They’ve torn little holes in a lot of my clothes (oddly, the Scallion gets off rather lightly in this respect). Yesterday, the Missoni shawl was put up high on the kitchen table so that they would not dig in, but some enterprising pup managed to pull it down, and the three of them engaged in a short, but vibrant, tug of war.

You are not supposed to yell at dogs, nor at puppies, but I swear my roars could be heard as far south as Rome.

If you want some laughs, go to google.com, click on Immagini, and type in Chewing Dogs. You'll see a lot of chewing dogs.

I mull over creating a dish that will keep those puppers chewing for centuries – a kind of Gladstone-ian method of chewing at least one hundred times before swallowing (although swallowing doesn't seem to be the conclusion to this exercise). Salt-water taffy comes immediately to mind, but that would probably kill them, and that is not the aim. Any suggestions would be most gratefully welcomed.

martedì 11 gennaio 2011

uno zucchino, due zucchini, tre zucchini, quattro


Is there a more boring vegetable in the world than zucchini? (You might counter by naming any root vegetable, and then I would counter-counter with green beans.)

This question occurred to me while contemplating all the zucchini we have in the refrigerator (the Scallion is fond of this vegetable). Started thinking about how to make zucchini interesting in time for lunch, consulted my usual vegetable go-to folk (Simon Hopkinson, Nigel Slater, Sophie Grigson) and even they didn’t really have much to say – lots of empty (to my mind, and I am a huge fan of all of three) recipes. Re-do the Talking Heads line “You’re talking a lot/but you’re not saying anything” to “You’ve written many zucchini recipes/but I’m not tasting anything.”

While out on the terrace with the pups and the puppers, I wondered why a (boring) vegetable originally from the Americas has an Italian name in the plural – theoretically, one zucchini would be uno zucchino (or, a/one zucchino)(even my automatic spellcheck corrects the o to an i); then I wondered why we in North America (Canadian readers, is it ok if I assume you call it so?) imported the Italian name, and the English imported its French name (which is courgette, which is why I originally didn’t find any zucchini recipes in the above three-listed English writers, because I was having a blonde moment).

These profound thoughts I had while watching Yip, Yap, and Yup attack many of the terracotta pots on the terrace: I can state with certainty that they enjoy curly parsley (especially Yip), geraniums (especially Yap), and artemisia (especially Yup). (Let the record show that they enjoyed chewing rue ‘til steered away from it, that the ivy was fun, too – oh, but fun-nest of all was chewing on the Banks rose, a stray vine fluttered very close to pup-level). The Scallion needs to prune it forthwith, but perhaps he won’t need to, as three small souls seem to be doing a nice job on it all by themselves. One of the beauties of shooing Yap away from the leaves-covered hyacinth pot was the revelation that the hyacinth is growing. Thank you, my little hyacinth girl ...

It will be a challenge keeping them away from the lavender, which Waldo never evinced any interest in. They have found the lavender/clematis-we-hope-this-year nook a fine spot in which to relieve themselves. Troubling.

(It should be noted that on Waldo’s first and only trip abroad (to the south of France) he displayed exceedingly good gardening/landscaping skills. He pretty much wrecked the herbaceous border of our rental; he did, however, counter that malicious canine behavior by eating raw snails, which is something that I hope the 3Ys will take to, since our garden teems with them.)

(Neither Lulu nor Rosie have any interest in the botanical world as experienced on our terrace, and Harry prefers the garden.)

Here’s some controversy, as I’d always thought that zucchini were native to the Americas: Alan Davidson sets the record straight, kind of: “That there is no true English name reflects the fact that, although courgettes were mentioned (in italic, to show that the word was a foreign one) in a few English recipe books of the 1930s, they only became popular in England after Elizabeth David in the 1950s and 1960s had introduced them (not in italic) to readers of her books; and that as zucchini they had a similar late arrival in the U.S., where Italian immigrants made the introduction.” Grazie tante, voi italiani. We give you the tomato and look what you give us in return.

Asks Elizabeth David: “ Why do we have to leave marrows growing until they are the size of pumpkins and taste of nothing but water? … Baby marrows, on the contrary, are delicious and delicate …” Perhaps. I hate to quibble with one of my heroes, so I won’t, though I would whisper in an audience-aside kind of moment that even baby marrows (zucchini) taste like water.

AHA! From Wiki: Zucchini, like all summer squash, has its ancestry in the Americas.[citation needed] However, the varieties of squash typically called "zucchini" were developed in Italy, many generations after their introduction from the "New World". (You will, of course, note the usual uncertainty with Wikipedia: “citation needed.”) In all probability, this occurred in the very late 19th century, probably near Milan; early varieties usually included the names of nearby cities in their names. (Do note that there’s a couple of citations needed here, especially in the last sentence which I stupidly just deleted.)

(And in the Who Knew? Department, from Wiki: In a culinary context, zucchini is treated as a vegetable, which means it is usually cooked and presented as a savory dish or accompaniment. Botanically, however, the zucchini is an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower.)

Have you ever knowingly eaten a swollen ovary before? Well, now you know you have.

Yes, I know that the most recent recipe posted was a risotto recipe. We tend to eat a lot of it around here, and this was one way of disguising zucchini. Sort of.
In an ideal world, baby leeks would substitute for the red onion; I wanted to pull a couple from our garden, but the Scallion advised me to wait ‘til they got bigger. In an equally ideal world, this risotto would be finished with a handful of chopped fresh marjoram but, as it turns out, Harry peed on it today rendering that an impossibility. Do know that this risotto is Italianate, not Italian. Putting sour cream – a hard-to-find product in many parts of Italy (we only have it at the local supermarket because where we live in Tuscany is heavily trafficked by Germans). If you want to render this more Italianate than Alto Adige-ish, use cream or an egg yolk instead.

We begin to plan our garden, as very shortly we’re planting garlic, fave, and peas for an early spring harvest. Guess what else will be included?

Risotto al pollo e zucchini/Risotto with chicken and zucchini

1¼ c. Arborio rice
2 T. butter
1 T. extravirgin olive oil
1 medium sized red onion, chopped
1 c. good-quality white wine
3-4 c. chicken or vegetable broth, heated ‘til quite hot
2 c. cooked chicken
1 c. zucchini, diced
1 zucchino, grated
1 c. Parmesan cheese, grated
2-3 T. sour cream
Handful of fresh marjoram

Melt the butter and extravirgin olive oil in a large, wide-brimmed saucepan. Add the chopped red onion (or leek, even better), and saute ‘til the onion is translucent.
Toss in the rice, and coat to cover. Add a cup of white wine (remember, it has to be potabile, because you’re drinking the rest of it with lunch), stir ‘til the rice absorbs it. Keep adding, as usual, in increments, the broth.

About five minutes before it’s ready to eat (which would be about 15 minutes after you’ve started), toss in the chicken and diced zucchini, and stir. A minute later, add the grated zucchini and the Parmesan cheese.

When it’s done, add the chopped marjoram (if pee free) and the sour cream (or cream, or egg yolk). Add a couple of grindings of salt from the mill, and pepper from the mill, check for seasoning, and eat immediately.

This would feed six as a modest starter, and four as a main course. In today’s case, it generously fed the Scallion (who cannot remember if he had thirds or fourths), and allowed a generous dollop to the Pups (Lulu, Harry, Rosie) on top of their evening kibble.

ADDENDA

Line from “Psycho Killer,” Talking Heads: 77.
Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food, New York, 1999.
Elizabeth David, Italian Food, Middlesex, 1954.

The Joy of Cooking has a most excellent zucchini pancake recipe. It’s made most excellent by the inclusion of feta. Epicurious.com lists 589 zucchini recipes; most of those garnering four forks involved zucchini playing the supporting role to an animal product like cheese or meat. Zucchini flower recipes also receive great praise, but how could they not if stuffed with things like crabmeat and then fried? How could you possibly go wrong with that? Stig, Scottish chum in London, made a remarkable zucchini dish this past August – it had almonds and tomatoes in it. Eek! Did I just use “remarkable” in conjunction with “zucchini?”

domenica 2 gennaio 2011

Nine Ladies Dancing


For those of you not living in Italy, your holidays basically wind down today.

For those of us living in Italy, we soldier on, as things don’t wind down ‘til the Befana, which is the 6th of January, Epiphany, as it’s known most everywhere else in Christendom.

Yesterday, we meant to introduce our Puppers, Yip, Yap, and Yup, to the great outdoors on the 1st day of the year – taking them outside in the sun -- after lunching as always on the eve/or 1st on obligatory cotechino e lenticchie (fatty fatty sausage with lentils) but, as it turns out, Yip, Yap, Yup, the Scallion, Lulu, Rosie, and Harry were fast asleep when the sun was out.

So we didn’t.

Still in holiday mode, I’m trying to figure out the “Twelve Days of Christmas” and wondering when it starts. If it starts on Christmas Day, then it ends on January 7th … don’t think so. So it must start on the 24th of December.

That made no sense, either. I was dumber and dumbing myself to pieces. So I went to Wikipedia.org. They say: “The Twelve Days of Christmas are the festive days beginning Christmas Day (25 December). This period is also known as Christmastide. The Twelfth Day of Christmas is 5 January,[1] with the celebrations of Christmas traditionally ending on Twelfth Night and is followed by the Feast of the Epiphany on 6 January. In some traditions, the first day of Epiphany (January 6) and the twelfth day of Christmas overlap.”

So, then, Twelfth Night? Again, wiki: “In England in the Middle Ages, this period was one of continuous feasting and merrymaking, which climaxed on Twelfth Night, the traditional end of the Christmas season. In Tudor England, Twelfth Night itself was forever solidified in popular culture when William Shakespeare used it as the setting for one of his most famous stage plays, titled Twelfth Night. Often a Lord of Misrule was chosen to lead the Christmas revels.”

(Harry and Yup can vie for the role of Misrule, although right now, as I write, Yip would win hands down.)

People first started singing the twelve-day carol in 1780. This lengthy carol, which seems so secular really isn’t. Each verse refers to something Biblical (quoting catholic.org (unbracketed):

1 Partridge in a Pear tree = True Love, refers to God
2 Turtle Doves = the Old and New Testaments
3 French Hens = Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues
4 Calling Birds = the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists [why not the four cardinal virtues, she shrieked, especially since we just had the three theologicals?]
5 Golden Rings = the first Five Books of the Old Testament, the "Pentateuch", which gives the history of man's fall from grace. [Here I really want to bellow Five Golden Retrievers, for reasons that are only too obvious.][Apologies to the Old Testament.]
6 Geese A-laying = the six days of creation
7 Swans A-swimming = the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the sacraments [and why not on the 7th day He/She rested? … just wondering …]
8 Maids A-milking = the eight beatitudes
9 Ladies Dancing = the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit
10 Lords A-leaping = the Ten Commandments [we all know those, don’t we?]
11 Pipers Piping = the eleven faithful apostles [no reference for Judas’s substitute, who came in off the bench]
12 Drummers Drumming = the points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed

Christmas lunch gave us leftover roast beef/rosbif, leftover Jerusalem artichoke (topaminbur, and yes, we only had but one), and some broth: What to do with this refrigerator pot pourri besides make sandwiches? Why, risotto, of course!
(This risotto will look gray and muddy, as many inevitably do. But who cares? It tastes really good, and you’ll be too tired from the festivities to pay it much attention. You might feel good that you’re not feeding the rosbif to the dogs. Or not. To spruce up this risotto, and if you can be bothered, chop a handful of flat-leaf parsley, and adorn at the last minute before serving.)

Risotto al rosbif

140 g. Arborio rice
2 T. butter + 2 T.
1 T. extravirgin olive oil
1 c. red wine (can be the lousy stuff from the box, since you drank all the good stuff in bottles on Christmas Day)
4 c. chicken/beef broth leftover from the broth recipe I did not write about, warmed
¾ lb. mushrooms, sliced
1 c. (at least) leftover rosbif, julienned*
¾ c. leftover grated Parmesan (from the tortellini in brodo)
3 T. Worcestershire sauce
Sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste
Handful of parsley (see above note)

Melt 2 T. butter and one T. extravirgin olive oil in a large saucepan on a medium-low flame. Add the rice, and toss to coat. Add the cup of wine, stir, and let it absorb. Continue adding the broth incrementally.

In between ladlefuls, melt the remaining two tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, add the mushrooms, and cook ‘til nicely browned. Remove from heat and reserve.
When the rice is just about done (after about 15 minutes), add the roast beef, grated Parmesan, and Worcestershire sauce. Five minutes or so later, taste for seasoning – add sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste, and the optional parsley.

*Astute reader Terracotta Sculptress pointed out that I'd omitted the amount of rosbif. Most excellent point, as this risotto is about that. Thank you, Terracotta Sculptress!

Serves two, generously.

On New Year’s Eve, the Scallion and I sat around the wood-burning stove, glasses of The Widow in hand, and talked about 2010 before watching Witness for the Prosecution for the 29th time. 2010 all came down to one word: Waldo. Which is why his picture is on the upper-left hand side of this note. He’d just come to live with us. We miss him as much today as we did on August 13, 2010.

Here’s hoping 2011 is better than 2010.

ADDENDA

I know at least one of my readers knows this by heart, but I also know that many of us don’t, so:

The Seven Gifts: Isaiah 11:2-3: The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—
3 and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;

The Eight Beatitudes: Matthew 5:3-12
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.
Blesses are the peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God.
Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven.

The Nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit: Paul, Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Twelve Drummers Drumming The twelve points of doctrine in the Apostles' Creed: 1) I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. 2) I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. 3) He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. 4) He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell [the grave]. 5) On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. 6) He will come again to judge the living and the dead. 7) I believe in the Holy Spirit, 8) the holy catholic Church, 9) the communion of saints, 10) the forgiveness of sins, 11) the resurrection of the body, 12) and life everlasting. (crivoice.org)