I had a busy, wonderful summer time with my mum in
Woking and surroundings. The weather was unbelievably gorgeous, sunny and warm
most of the time, sometimes hot. I felt I was living in a sort of extension of
the Italian peninsula in green Surrey countryside with a perfect Mediterranean
climate, except for the humidity.
I spent July and August at home, but before it I had a
week in Rome and a few days in Florence with my mum. She had told me some time
ago that she wished to visit the Uffizi Gallery she had never seen before, so
though I had been in Florence last Easter with my husband, I was happy to see
it again with her. Florence is such a beautiful city that you can never get
enough of it. Besides Uffizi, we visited most of the churches, went to Palazzo
Pitti, where there was an engrossing ongoing exhibition called Tracce, which
compares haute-couture models with works of fine art from the collection of the
Modern Art museum of Palazzo Pitti. We also visited Gucci Garden and Ferragamo
museum where there was a new exhibition about Italian people who lived and
worked in Hollywood; you can read my review on the exhibitions in Florence
here:
Brancacci Chapel with Masaccio’s frescos impressed us
as well. The desperate, stark naked Adam and Eve expelled from Eden look so
human and real that the other works by Masolino and Filippo Lippi painted near
it seem artificial and insubstantial in comparison.
We had luscious ice creams at Carraia, where they make
the best ice cream ever, and idyllic
breakfasts and dinner times on the cute balcony full of flowers of our Airbnb
with a stunning view of Brunelleschi dome. Unfortunately, my mum, who is 88,
couldn’t do as much as she would have liked as she gets tired easily now and
she suffers from harsh back aches due to her twisted spine. She walks slowly
and needs to rest from time to time. Nevertheless, we could do a lot
considering her frail conditions. She enjoys art very much so Florence is certainly
her ideal place.
In Rome we visited the exhibition of Turner at
Chiostro del Bramante near piazza Navona, an unmissable place to see if you visit
the capital. I can see Turner in London at Tate Britain, of course, where
there are several rooms dedicated to the great English painter, but admiring
his work in this wonderful venue was a comprehensive experience. There were
about a hundred works on display, some of them
Besides helping my mum with her last chores and
shopping before leaving for England, we visited one of my best friends who
lives in the centre of Rome near piazza Campo de’ Fiori. She is a lively, high
spirited person with whom I’ve always had a great time just walking around the
centre, having an ice cream or a drink together or simply having a chat sitting
on a stone bench in piazza Farnese. We had intrepid tours in Europe, mainly
France and Spain, together in the past, in that blissfully unsettled interval
between the end of the studies and the decision to settle down, that for me was
getting married and having children, a choice I’ve never regretted.
My friend is a great cook, like most Italian people;
cooking for her is a pleasure as much as eating and she takes her time not only
in the accurate balancing and mixing of ingredients but also in the artful
arranging of food. Everything she makes is superbly delicious and at the same
time very simple. She is originally from Sardinia so this time she prepared for
us some Sardinian ravioli (ravioli Baradili) with cherry tomato sauce. Here is
the recipe:
For the ravioli you need to prepare homemade pasta
sheets with 300 g of 00 flour or plain white flour and 3-4 eggs. Mix the
ingredients, knead the dough and let it rest for about half an hour then roll
it out using a pasta machine. In the meantime, prepare the filling mixing 250 g
of ricotta, the grated zest of a lemon, an egg, a tsp and a half of sugar and
half a tsp of ground nutmeg. Cut the pasta sheets in squares with a wheel
pastry cutter, fill it with a tsp of the ricotta mixture and seal the ravioli
damping the hems with water. You should make ravioli of about an inch and a
half side.
For the tomato sauce you need: a can of cherry
tomatoes, half of a white or red onion thinly cut, extra virgin olive oil,
sugar, salt, pepper, fresh basil and white wine.
Pour some oil in a saucepan with the onion, let it simmer
for a while but do not burn it, add the tomatoes, about half a tsp of salt,
sugar and some pepper. Let it simmer for at least half an hour. Add half a
glass of white wine and the basil. Let it simmer for another half an hour or
till it becomes thicker, but it doesn’t need to be too thick.
Cook the ravioli in boiling salted water and drain them. To serve your ravioli
you need to follow this procedure: pour some tomato sauce on a deep plate and
sprinkle grated parmigiano and grated percorino on it, put 3-4 ravioli on the
plate and add more tomato sauce on top, and parmigiano and pecorino again, then
another layer of ravioli and tomato sauce and the grated cheeses until you have
about 8-10 ravioli in each plate (apparently this is the ideal portion).
She also served some pane carasau (Sardianian thin and
crispy flatbread), bresaola with rocket and black olives, all properly ‘watered’ by red wine. To end
our glorious dinner, we couldn’t skip a well deserved ice cream from
Frigidarium, a Sicilian ice cream parlour in via del Governo Vecchio. It was a wondrous,
substantial way of being together.
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