Time has come again for streets to exhibit their most creative decorations, showing off to all those scrambling in search of the ultimate gift.
Time has come again for houses to set up beautiful Christmas trees with lights a shine and ornaments a glitter while the wood is crackling in the fireplace.
Time has come again for what is considered to be one of the most important family times of the year by many.
Time has come again for the host to work on the Christmas dinner menu and impress the guests.

Time has come again for Christmas. Whether you like it or not.
Some will wonder why there is so much fuss over something that doesn’t really mean anything to them or that may bring up bad memories.
Others will be looking forward to enjoying a glass of mulled wine while listening to Christmas carols.

Surely enough, rushing through stores to find the perfect gift may not be the most enjoyable aspect of this time of year but Christmas isn’t just a painful experience: Christmas gives us the chance to put a smile on people’s faces, when they see the festive colours in which our houses are decorated; Christmas is the good excuse to do something good for people who are in a need; Christmas is one of the rare opportunities to share a meal with 30 people joking and laughing around a table.

At Taste of Christmas, it was time for food producers and restaurants to showcase their best ingredients and menus to the attendees looking for the solution that would turn their dinner party into a feast.

Not as big and appealing as its big brother ‘Taste Of London’, the Christmas edition was however a good opportunity to see how Christmas was going to taste for the exhibitors – Their worst Christmas nightmare, the ingredient that they will always use for Christmas or where they would like to be for Christmas. Points of view can be so very similar and yet so very different!

Brendan Fyles – Bentley’s
“My worst Christmas nightmare would be to have a ruined turkey for lunch. On the other side, I will always go for Port and Stilton to share at home with my family.”

The fish pie was the star of the menu at Taste. Rich with full of flavours, one of the best fish pies I  have ever tasted.

11-15 Swallow Street
London
W1B 4DG
020 7734 4756
www.bentleys.org

Alfred Prasad – Tamarind
“When I was a young boy, my mom put me in charge of looking after the plum cake in the oven. But our oven didn’t have a timer at that time and the turkey burnt in it. This Christmas nightmare will stay in my mind forever! As I come from a Christian family, we can’t celebrate Christmas without a good roast Turkey. For Christmas, I will be in India with my parents as the weather is too hot for me to go back home during summer.”

The tree dishes showcased at Taste gave a very good introduction of what Tamarind features on its menu: an intense, tasty and yet delicate Indian cuisine.

20-22 Queen Street
London, W1J 5PR
020 7629 3561
www.tamarindrestaurant.com

Francesco Mazzei – L’Anima
“I had my worst Christmas nightmare last year in Disneyland where we went with my family. The food was absolutely horrible and the staff didn’t know how to look after the kids. Such a nightmare!
My favourite ingredient for Christmas? Baccalà (salt cod). For Christmas, I would like to cook for people who can’t afford a Christmas dinner and who are in the street.”

The first spoonful of the creamy Panettone served with melted dark chocolate was a ‘délice’ and a true revelation for the palate. The risotto was rich and well-cooked in the true Italian way.

1 Snowden Street
London, EC2A 2DQ
020 7422 7000
www.lanima.co.uk

Mustapha Laaziz – Jom Makan
“Fortunately, I have never experienced a Christmas nightmare and I’m very happy like this! In Malaysian cuisine, you will always find ginger, lemongrass, chilli paste and tamarind in Christmas meals. We can’t live without it!
For Christmas, I’m looking forward to going to France and spend some time with my fiancée.”

The Malaysian cuisine can’t live without the magic ingredients and Jom Makan managed to combine all of them to create an interesting combination of flavours.

5-7 Pall Mall East
Trafalgar Square
London, SW1Y 5BA
020 7925 2402
www.jommakan.co.uk

Danny Russel - Freedom Food
“My worst Christmas nightmare would be to have a white Turkey for lunch! For Christmas, I’ll be in Switzerland with my family, treating myself with the ultimate ingredient for this time of the year:  Wagyu beef.”

Wagyu beef had been a reference amongst food bloggers for a while and everybody is in love with it. Tender and  tasty, it goes very well on a piece of bread with a slice of foie gras.

Unit 43, London Stone Business Estate
Broughton St
London, SW8 3QR
020 7720 4520
www.freedownfood.co.uk

Roelof Le Roux - Nudo
“The worst Christmas nightmare? That all the Nudo trees don’t find a home! The Nudo thyme oil adds a great flavour to roast potatoes, games and butternut and it should be the ingredient to have in every home for Christmas!
I will go to Cape Town to spend Christmas with my family, where it’s hot and sunny.”

Nudo’s olive oils come in different flavours and really add a good flavour to the dishes. The idea of adopting a tree and receive all the produce from it is a creative gift for someone looking for a unique Christmas present.

020 7617 7235
www.nudo-italia.com

Joanna Plumb - Edible Ornamentals
“I think the worst thing that can happen at Christmas will be to spend the day by myself but hopefully, I will be in Sicily with my family, spicing up the dishes with some fresh chilli!”

Hot, hot, hot are the chilis that Joanna and the Edible Onarmentals team look after everyday in their nursery. Provider of the mexican restaurant Wahaca, the team spend all their time and efforts to produce the best chilis for spicy food fans.

Cherwood Nursery
Blue Bells, Chawston
Beds MK44 3BL
01480 405663
www.edibleornamentals.co.uk

Alison Lea-Wilson – Halen Mön
“Spoiling the Christmas dinner would be the worst thing to do at Christmas. However, with some Halen Mön spicy salt that adds a great flavour to the Christmas meal, people should have a great time! On my side, I will be at home with my family.”

The story started 10 years ago when the company to supply their local butcher and since then, the sea salt from Wales has become a real success, being distributed in 22 countries and used in ones of the best restaurants all around the world.

Brynsiency
Isle of Anglesey
Wales
LL61 6TQ
www.seasalt.co.uk

And the time has come to wish you … a Merry Christmas!

‘But it’s delicious’ I told her. ‘It’s a beautiful fusion of British and Italian cuisine,’ I went on. ‘It’s based on an ancient Italian recipe’.

Finally her reply came, ‘But Daddy, Marmite on spaghetti sounds disgusting!’

I did eventually persuade Rosie to try this brilliant simple dish which comes from Anna del Conte via Nigella Lawson. And she loved it, so did Sorrel, the little one. It’s now a firm favourite on the ‘nothing in the fridge’ recipe list.

Our north American friends can find Marmite (or Vegemite) at World Market, Amazon and in some Safeways.

Serves 4 kids

Nudo Spaghetti – 350g
Unsalted butter – 50 g
Marmite – 1 tsp
Parmesan cheese – freshly grated, for serving

Cook the spaghetti in a pot of boiling, salted water. While the pasta is cooking, melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the Marmite and 1 tablespoon of the pasta water. Mix it through and then pour over the drained spaghetti. Serve with a generous sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese.

My first thrill of ‘Christmas feeling’ usually comes around late October. It is always inspired by someone far better prepared than me, someone who has already got round to buying their Christmas presents, someone who has decided to give someone an olive tree adoption, someone who has asked for ‘Happy Christmas’ to be lovingly inscribed in the message card. The heady childish thrill of Christmas thoughts and the smell of imaginary mince pies and fires and decorating trees and aching anticipation is usually coupled with a very grown up non-thrill of ‘oh my god how come some people are so organised?’ Personally I can barely think about Christmas shopping until the shop assistants are looking hopefully at their watches towards the tail end of 24^th December.

Those message cards nowadays teleport me to Nudo’s very first Christmas. The company had only been going for a few months and we had just, rather ineffectively, done our first olive harvest. I think the total number of trees we’d adopted stood at around 14 and we knew the names, and birthdays, of all the foster parents. Friends and family are the saviours of early hopes in a new business. Anyway we were approaching Christmas and somehow hoped that ‘real’ customers might somehow, magically start emerging in force. But how would anyone find us? How would anyone in the ‘real world’ even know we existed? Is this something Father Christmas asks himself?

The answer, at least as we saw it, was Christmas gift guides- you know those lists in newspapers (so old school!) that give you great ideas for last minute presents? We were prepared to do anything, including as it turned out, selling our children, to get in one. I exaggerate of course. But I do remember in our desperation, sending a photograph of one year old Rosie with a sorry expression and the words ‘What kind of Christmas?’ with the press release that we sent to friends to scatter to anyone they knew who’d ever even had a paper round.

Emotional blackmail is a very effective tool (a fact soon to be confirmed, were confirmation needed, by spending Christmas in the company of Italian mammas). By the miracle of modern communication, that press release made it into the hands of someone who knew someone who knew someone who was compiling no less an opus than the Independent’s guide to ‘Great Christmas presents for men’ in the Independent. Those Christmas gift guides really do make a difference. People knew we existed. People adopted our olive trees. And Rosie had a lovely first Nudo Christmas.

Every little corner of Italy has a pasta that it calls its own, and if you’re lucky it comes along with a bit of history or a nice story. The best I’ve heard so far is Le Marche’s very own strozzapreti. Not only does it have a clever little twist in it that means sauces (like the ubiquitous wild boar ragù) stick to it in gooey lumps, but best of all, its name means ‘priest choker’.

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)

Mi piace.

Loro sono i Valley Lodge e nel video di “All of My Loving”, diretto da Dave & Rory, il cantante abita in una casa il cui arredamento è interamente composto da uomini nudi.

Se trovo tante persone bendisposte e volenterose, potrebbe anche essere un modo economico ed interessante per arredare casa…

Sono aperte le selezioni!!

printscreen fatti in giro per la rete, dopo gli emo, dopo gli indie, arrivano i fotografi-wannabe

la reflex è come l’iphone, sono strumentazioni costose e impegative che fanno gola sia ai geek che ai coatti. i geek proseguono la loro carriera aprendosi account flickr e spedendo altri soldi per acquistare nuovi obiettivi (e martellando i coglioni alla povera gente con “mi guardi le ultime foto su flickr?”, “o ma le hai viste le mie ultime foto?”, eccetera), i coatti no, perchè su google mettono “obbbiettivi reflex” e tutto finisce li.

Me sugieren que le dé tiempo al tiempo, mas no lo puedo hacer. La idea, el pensamiento me come desde adentro, tengo un nudo en la garganta, no puedo respirar, mi corazón se acelera, ¿qué hago? ¿Me quedo quieto mientras siento como muere una parte de mí? No, no encuentro eso una opción válida y/o razonable. ¡Quiero una justificación lógica! ¿Es mucho pedir?

“Dale tiempo al tiempo”, en ese relajo muero por dentro; pensar en aquello que me duele va matándome, lento pero seguro. Irónico, ¿no es así?

Ironías de la vida: mientras muero, estará divirtiéndose por ahí, mientras muero estará experimentado por ahí, mientras muero va a vivir… Quizás no muera, pero sí deje de vivir… La vida es un tremendo joder, ¿o no?

¿Qué hacer? ¿Qué no hacer? Supongo que no son las preguntas, creo que la pregunta es: ¿cómo hacer lo que quiero hacer? Si las tres son igualmente válidas e importantes, pues me jodí, porque ya tengo suficientes problemas con una, ¿te imaginas con tres?

Reflexionar, filosofar, no me queda otra cosa…

¡Déjà vu!

Every year, our harvesting skills get more finely honed. The first year, we were frankly laughed at by Corrado (who runs the olive press) about our woeful productivity. He couldn’t understand how we could have harvested for so many hours yet have so few olives. But then he didn’t see us in the grove, trying to keep Rosie (then aged one and togged up in full winter gear as it was freezing) entertained with a few perfumed bricks in a travel cot. We didn’t look like the most productive harvesting team out there, and our results were no contradiction. That first year, we had no transport, so had to lug each 20kg box of olives up our vertiginous slopes by hand, something that is draining on body and soul. And incredibly slow. We also, having only moved in a month before, had scant contacts and help to call upon, so the team was a distinctly amateur one, comprised of Jason, me and occasional help from our heroic visiting sisters.

Cut to 2009. We have a land rover. We have expert olive harvesters. We have a machine with automated wiggly fingers. A team. No travel cots. No favours from sisters. And Corrado doesn’t laugh at us any more, sometimes he even, almost admits to being quite impressed with our output.

And it’s funny getting better at things. In one way, it is surely one of life’s great satisfactions to improve, to realise that one can learn and become more effective and more efficient. But on the other it is hard not to hold out a bit of nostalgia for those innocent, inefficient days that are the nursery slopes of any new activity. So when Jason phoned last week to say that the Landrover was stuck down in the grove, unable to get up the slippery mud-slide, and he and team were hoiking the crates up one by one, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit fond, a little bit proud even. It’s good to keep a hand in with your past.

Esagerata.

The porcini mushroom hunting season is now drawing to a close, but last week my mate Marco gave me an overflowing punnet of these fine beasts that he and his mum had foraged themselves. They were fantastic, meaty, flavoursome and they keep their fleshy bulk even when you cook them. I dished them up on a rosti, a recipe stolen from over the border in Switzerland.

Ingredients for 4 people

Fresh porcini mushrooms – 150g (or 30g dried porcini)

Potatoes – 550g of a waxy variety

Butter – 3 tablespoons

Onion – one

Olive oil – for frying

Chestnut mushrooms – 150g

Garlic – 1 clove

Double cream – 4 tablespoons

Parsley – bunch

If you’re using dried porcini, re-hydrate them in a cupful of boiling water.

Then put the unpeeled potatoes in a saucepan of salted water and bring to the boil. Parboil for about 10-15 mins, depending on their size. Then drain, run under cold water and peel and grate the spuds.

Finely slice the onion and fry it till golden in 2/3rds of the butter. Add the cooked onions to the potatoes and mix in with a good dose of salt and pepper.

Now over to the sauce. Slice the chestnut mushrooms (including the porcini if you are using fresh ones) and sauté with the finely chopped garlic, in the rest of the butter, for 5 minutes. If you are using dried porcini, now add them and sauté the mix for another 5 minutes. Add the cream and chopped parsley.

Heat the olive oil in the frying pan, take a handful of the potato mix and gently mould it into a palm sized pattie. Fry it on a medium heat until golden brown on both sides, gently turning it over.

Place a pattie on a plate and spoon over the mushroom mixture. Serve with a lamb chop or some good Italian sausages.

Corso di Nudo tenuto dall’artista Cornelia Stauffer Barbara Reale Partecipa a questo workshop.
Ritratto dal vivo con modella, pensavo fosse più emozionale…..copia dal vivo

The Italians aren’t really ones for the tapas approach. I’ve often felt rather miserly when, in a market, I might be purchasing a single melon or a solitary bag of spinach. All around me are women (as they invariably are, Italian men don’t really shop, though they do ‘advise’) buying 10kg of oranges, or 5 pineapples, or their own body weight in tomatoes. If Italians are going to eat something for dinner, even if it’s just the contorno (side dish) or fruit for desert, they go for it. Where I might serve up as a starter a single slice of melon, cut into a ’boat’ of bite sized cubes, my Italian counterpart would serve a whole melon, boldly sliced. My side vegetable might comprise 10-20 green beans and a few spoonfuls of peas; theirs 1-200 beans and an entire bag of peas. My chop is their calf.

I don’t think it’s that they’re greedy, or that I am really Jack Sprat-mean, I just think we see these things in a different way. It’s as if (and some physiologist somewhere has probably looked into this) they feel that to make an impression on the body, one needs to provide above a certain quite high base level; 20 beans and you might as well not bother. Five a day? More like five kilos a day. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten more than one orange in a sitting. I’ve seen Italians eat five! Because today is orange day. So let’s make it count.

Apply this same approach to gelato or chocolate and you’ll have found just one of the many reasons Italy is such a lovely place to go on holiday.

Avete sempre sognato di vedere le persone accanto a voi nude con il solo ausilio di un mirabolante gadget?

Da oggi sarà possibile con la nuova applicazione “Nude it” per iPhone, scaricabile qui, tramite il sito WhoIsTheBaldGuy.

Scaricabile si fa per dire, visto che per ora dicono di attendere e che l’applicazione sarà presto disponibile…

Una grossa bufala? Mi sa di sì…

Di classe.

It’s funny how things come around. Until relatively recently, the idea of the Italian daily shopping trip - to buy the fresh produce for that day’s lunch and supper – was anathema to many Brits. We preferred the idea of a lengthy shopping list and a still lengthier trip to a supermarket to stock up on everything we might desire for the week to come. We’d feel smug and organised as we filed our purchases into cupboards and fridges and congratulate ourselves on our time-saving planning. But how often did we do this only to look in the fridge, even hours later, to find there was still ’nothing to eat’ or ‘nothing I quite feel like’? Or worse still, how often did we commit the crime of having to throw away unused, gone-off items which never managed to find their desired moment? If you’re anything like me, quite often. Depressingly often. To the extent that it became clearer and clearer that the supermarket weekly shop was not all it was cracked up to be.

The daily shop, and even more so, the market shop, is the answer. It works on a much more human scale in every way. You can carry everything without breaking your arms. You know what you feel like because you are dealing with the present tense not some speculative future. You can fit it in as a little break between other jobs. You can see what is fresh and there.  You know how much you need because you know how many you’re catering for and how hungry you are. And you can spy on other people’s purchases to get ideas.

In a tiny village like Loro Piceno the spying element is not to be underestimated. Everyone shops in the same place (there’s only one food shop in the centre), so everyone can see exactly what everyone else is buying. There is undoubtedly a sense of cooking competitiveness. If there’s a particularly choice cut at the meat counter, there will be a rabble elbowing each other out of the way to get it. There’ll be a run on artichokes if an influential local figure declares them to be fine. There will be disdain for anyone with too much prepackaged food in their basket. Market day on a Monday would make a fascinating study in group psychology, as people queue for ages to get zucchini from stall A, even though there is no queue at all for the seemingly identical offerings at stall B.

And now the Brits are slowly coming around to the ’small and often’ philosophy of shopping. It’s not that they’re turning from the supermarkets – far from it – but they are using them with a bit more sense of the market (with its associations of fresh produce, recently plucked from a supplier and soon to be sent towards stomach) and a bit less sense of super (the idea that everything has to be scaled up). And hooray for that.

Purezza.

E’ successo veramente.

l’uomo per sfuggire dal marito della donna, è uscito sul balcone tutto nudo. E’ successo in una città del sudovest della Cina.

[via]

Miru Kim è un’artista, fotografa, illustratrice e organizzatrice di eventi d’arte di origine coreana, residente a New York.

Nelle sue foto, raccolte sotto il titolo Naked City Spleen, ha esplorato i luoghi abbandonati, desolati, nascosti e segreti di diverse città del mondo, posando nuda in questi particolari ambienti diroccati: dalle catacombe di Parigi alle fogne di Seoul, dai tunnel del sottosuolo di Berlino alle vecchie fabbriche in disfacimento dei dintorni di New York.

I suoi scatti, suggestivi e malinconici, raccontano la parte dimenticata, “rimossa”, delle nostre metropoli. La sua figura nuda che si aggira per i sotterranei delle città o attraverso enormi fabbriche in disuso, sembra quella dell’ultima sopravvisuta a una catastrofe, e allo stesso tempo fa pensare a un animale che esplori le rovine di un mondo tecnologico di cui non si ha più ricordo.

La stessa Kim ha infatti affermato: “Semplicemente documentare queste strutture prossime alla demolizione non mi bastava. Così volevo creare un personaggio di finzione o un animale che si aggirasse in questi spazi e il modo più semplice per farlo era diventare io stessa la modella. Ho optato per l’assenza di vestiti perché volevo che l’animale fosse senza alcuna implicazione culturale, o elementi relativi a un’epoca precisa”.

Che il motivo del nudo sia proprio quello di annullare ogni riferimento culturale, risulta chiaro dalle fotografie: non c’è nulla di erotico negli scatti di Miru Kim. La magia che, di per sé, i luoghi abbandonati esercitano è invece esaltata dall’elemento spiazzante della figura femminile che si nasconde, osserva, esplora, ha paura: libera, ma indifesa di fronte al decadimento del panorama, l’ultima donna ci accompagna attraverso scenari di infinita tristezza e solitudine.

Ecco il sito di Miru Kim.

Sometimes I’m happy cracking open a jar of Hellman’s Mayonnaise, other times that just doesn’t cut the mustard so to speak. If I’m making some roasted potatoes to pick on as a snack, or some polpette or sausages for the kids I’m inclined to make some mayonnaise too. My favourite is the garlicy French version aioli, but recently I’ve started using our chilli olive oil to make a mayonnaise with a kick. This one isn’t so popular with the kids.

Ingredients

Egg Yolks – 2 large free range

Sunflower oil – 150ml

Nudo chili olive oil – 150ml

Lemon – a teaspoon of juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Put the egg yolks into a big, round bottom bowl. Sprinkle a pinch of salt over the yolk as you whisk them gently. Now start the serious part by adding a drop of the sunflower oil at a time, whilst constantly whisking. When it seems the yolks have taken the first few drops pour a steady stream of the oil whilst you whisk.  When the sunflower oil has run out swap over to the chilli olive oil.  Again pour in a continuous stream of this and look to have added both oils in within a few minutes. Toward the end the mayonnaise should thicken as you’d imagine. If it hasn’t taken and goes runny and ‘splits’ you can start again by pouring the mix into a new bowl with a fresh egg yolk, a bit at a time, all the while whisking.

Anyway, assuming it hasn’t got wrong then whisk in a teaspoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice and a good does of salt and pepper to taste.

This is lovely used on sausages, polpette, other meats and in sarnies.

In questi ultimi tempi Brandon Beemer, che interprta il bel Owen nella soap “Beautiful“, si è prestato (e sopratutto, ha prestato il suo fisico con tanto di occhi di ghiaccio photoshoppatissimi) per delle lodevoli cause: sopra nella campagna contro la Proposition 8, per far sì che non vengano aboliti i matrimoni tra persone dello stesso sesso in California, e sotto immortalato contro i tumori maschili.

Meno male che ci sono dei paladini come Brandon, perché il popolo GLBT non se la passa proprio benissimo (in Italia)…

Deboli speranze arrivano dalla ratifica in tutti e 27 i Paesi dell’UE del trattato di Lisbona, che sancisce pari diritti per tutti, compreso il matrimonio, senza distinzione di sesso od orientamento sessuale, in tutti i Paesei membri.

Voi che ne dite, cambierà qualcosa?