Some exhibitions I visited at the British Museum

My husband and I are members of the British Museum and I am a member of the V&A as well. Needless to say, one of our favourite places to visit are exactly museums.

Since last year we have popped into the British Museum several times at weekends and enjoyed all the temporary free exhibitions, as well as the more important ones.

We could admire an incredible sculpture of a god from the Polynesian island of Rurutu called A’a with the aspect of a human being: a broad smiley face holding his hands on his belly. The nose, mouth and ears were made of small figures. It probably represented fertility and had a cavity inside where reliquary were kept, like feathers and human hair. It was handed in to missionaries by the natives who decided to convert to Christianity after a period of disease and decline of population in 19^th century. Apparently two great artists like Picasso and Henry Moore owned a cast of A’a.

I could also see the Lampedusa cross, made in Italy in 2015 with the wood taken from a wreckage of a boat used to transport refugees and immigrants from Africa to the Italian island of Lampedusa in the south of Sicily. It was made by Francesco Tuccio, a carpenter from Lampedusa. In its simplicity it definitely expresses the unpretentious commitment of the people who try to help refugees as well as the profound sufferance and hope of those who come to Europe fleeing persecution and hunger.

In the Prints and Drawings room there were the watercolours of Rome by Francis Towne who visited Rome and its surroundings on several occasions to complete his series of pencil sketched watercolours of Roman ruins and the landscapes around Rome in the late 18^th century. The works represent the wild and luxurious countryside around Rome, the banks of the Tiber, several important monuments like the  Colosseum, the Baths of Caracalla, the Palatine Hill, the Forum of Augustus and the so called temple of Vesta as well as some pictures sketched in Tivoli and Naples. His drawings are neat and precise, the colours are delicate and though sometimes he depicts dramatic rocks and invasive vegetation, his works remain rigorous in the detailed structure and sensible in tone.

Just near the Prints and Drawings room there are the rooms dedicated to Asian art. Krishna in the Garden of Assam was centred on a textile from Assam, a region in the north east of India. The textile is associated with the worship of the Hindu god Krishna and decorated with scenes from Krishna’s life. Krishna was evidently a hero whose deeds still inspire stories and performances. For example he subdues the serpent demon Kaliya and meets other demons like the Crane demon and the demon Putana. The textiles is made of twelve silk strips sewn together where the same scenes are repeated several times. Their aim is to teach the life of Krishna and inspire unconditional devotion to this god. Though the original textiles were produced in Assam, none of them survived because they were reused. The ones we can admire today come from Tibet, Bhutan and even Wales.

In the same room, some months later, that is just before Christmas, there was an amazing display of shadow puppets from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Shadow puppets are made from animal hide (buffalo or cow), the outline is drawn on it then cut or punched out. Finally it is painted and rods are fitted on the back and attached to hands and legs. More modern puppets were displayed as well made of coloured plastic and with a contemporary flavour, like the Wayan hip hop one. Similarly to all puppet theatre all over the world, shadow puppet theatre tells stories linked to legends or folktales, ordinary events of life or myths involving gods and the spirit world. Among the beautiful puppets on display, there were human gods and demons but also animals and cracking clowns. A magic world.

At the same time, Maggi Hambling’s charcoal, graphite and ink works were exhibited in the adjacent rooms. Her work is so strong, dynamic and sensuous, sometimes slightly destabilizing, just like her words: “I try to distil the essence of the subject and capture the life force of a moment...the challenge is to touch the subject with all the desire of a lover.”

Another amazing exhibition we visited at the British Museum was Sicily, Culture and Conquest. It focused on two main historical periods: 734 BC when Greeks arrived, and the Norman period, 11^th century. The strategic position of Sicily in the middle of the Mediterranean sea and its fertile soil attracted settlers and conquerors who gave a cosmopolitan flavour to the island. The Phoenicians arrived in 800 BC, then the Greeks, the Romans, Byzantines, the Arabs and the Normans. In Palermo you can find the unique Arab-Norman architecture, a wonderful synthesis of two cultures we sometimes consider opposite. The Arabs introduced crops like oranges, lemons, sugar cane, rice and cotton as well as scientific innovations. The texts of Plato and Aristotle survived in the Arabic version and were then translated into Latin. Though the different populations that settled in Sicily were culturally diverse, they lived peacefully most of the time but didn’t completely integrate or develop equality.  Sometimes Muslims were attacked and the descendant of Greeks became serfs. It was a complex, intricate and rich reality, hard to grasp completely but always interesting to peruse.

Sunken Cities was the other great exhibition we visited, it was about two Egyptian cities that were submerged about 1300 years ago by tides. The remains testify the interaction between ancient Egypt and Greece. The big difference between the two cultures was their worshipping, Greeks worshipped human-shaped gods while Egyptian gods had animal features. After Alexander the Great conquest (332 BC) the names of the Egyptian gods were translated into Greek and adapted to the different mentality. Two beautiful sculptures, one of Arsinoe (sister-wife of Ptolemy II) in dark stone showing an Egyptian posture and Greek drapery, and a magnificent Apis bull dedicated by the Roman emperor Hadrian to the temple of Serapis in Alexandria, testify the mixture of the two cultures.

Another interesting display I enjoyed was the Japanese porcelain Kakiemon produced by the same family for four hundred years. They developed a pioneering overglaze technique applying enamel colours on a glazed porcelain surface using bright orange-red, the colour of the persimmon fruit, kaki. The pieces on display were exquisite with some lower examples of copies made by Chinese and European porcelain producers. It was easy to detect the difference in quality and skill.

The new Montalbano

When I was in Italy during Easter holidays I watched some new Montalbano episodes, which will probably reach the UK shortly. The actors are the same of the first Montalbano (not the young one), that is Luca Zingaretti as the inspector, Cesare Bocci as Mimì, Peppino Mazzotta as Fazio, Angelo Russo as Catarella. They look a bit older, of course, some fatter (Catarella), others strangely skinny (especially Mimì and Fazio) and consequently quite wrinkly. There is a new Livia (Montalbano’s eternal fiancée), very fit and thin, and with a more defying attitude, which is nice. All the rest is there: beautiful sea, sunny weather and complex plots full of Mediterranean passion.

In the following paragraphs there will be spoilers about the episodes, please stop reading if you don’t wish to know what happens. I found some of these new episodes definitely harrowing with an uncomfortable stress on sex. I can understand that Camilleri’s aim (Andrea Camilleri is the author of the detective stories the TV series is based on) is to reveal prostitutes’ exploitation and sexist behaviour, but I think the film may provoke exactly the opposite effect. Sex is very much stressed in these episodes with long shots that linger on photos of naked women and on rape scenes. Party rapes and tortures of young and beautiful Eastern girls are not just hinted, we can see them naked, bruised and bleeding for a while on the screen. I watched it on the computer and I wondered at what time it was broadcasted on the Italian channels, hopefully after 10 pm, which is unlikely considering its popularity across all age groups.

Honestly I was very disappointed, I enjoyed very much all the previous Montalbano series and sometimes watched them twice or three times, but not these last ones. Besides the porno shots, I hated two scenes in particular. One is a long first scene of a dying naked young girl stabbed in the stomach who manages to get on a car and drive till a friend’s house, where she dies. She is agonizing, her body covered only by a rag she holds against her belly, it is excruciating and outrageous to see her in such conditions and for such a long time.

The other thing is something Montalbano says in one of the films. It is the story of a loan shark and womanizer who pays and blackmails young girls to force them to be his lovers. He takes and dumps them as he pleases and among them there is also his daughter, his lifetime lover, who is apparently crazily in love with him. His last lover agrees to be with him on the condition that he pays her university fees, therefore managing to retain some power in the relationship. She is the only one who is not a victim, is not frightened or subdued and is in control, geting what she wants from him. And what is Montalbano’s comment about her? “She’s just like him”, he says, meaning she is like the rapist, womanizing loan shark guy. Unbelievable! This is very sad and disappointing. The daughter instead, who was so jealous of her father’s new lover that kills him and then commits suicide, is the one who really loved him, according to Montalbano.

Dear Montalbano, there must be something wrong because I don’t get it this time. I hope the BBC will cut or shorten some scenes and lose some sentences in translation.

Cakes and biscuits with gluten free alternative flours

I was flabbergasted by the various kinds of flours in the supermarket shelves and decided to try some of them. I experimented both with biscuits and cakes recipes, just to have something special from time to time.

Donut cake with rice flour

You need: 200 g of rice flour, 150 g of icing sugar, 4 eggs, 30 g of melted butter, one tsp of baking powder and 100 g of dark bitter chocolate to decorate.

Whip the eggs with the sugar using an electric mixer for 15-20 minutes. Add the melted butter, the flour little by little and the baking powder. Keep whipping for another five minutes. Pour the mixture in a greased tin with the shape of a donut and bake for half an hour at 180° C. When cool, melt the chocolate in a pan and pour it on the cake.

Biscuits with rice flour

You need: 200 g of rice flour, 100 g of caster sugar, 2 eggs, 30 g of melted butter, half a tsp of baking powder and 50 g of glacé ginger in cubes or dried chopped apricots.

Mix flour and sugar in a bowl, add the eggs, the baking powder and the butter. Finally add the chopped apricots, or the glacé ginger. Mingle them in the mixture using a fork and then knead the dough. Shape little balls, then press them with the palms of the hands and set them on a greased oven tray. Bake for 20 minutes, or till golden, at 180° C.

Cake with buckwheat flour

You need: 250 g of buckwheat flour, 150 g of golden granulated sugar, 2 eggs, 2 tbsp of olive oil, one tsp of baking powder, half a tsp of bicarbonate of soda, 150 g of cranberries and three tbsp of Demerara sugar.

Cook the cranberry in a pan with the Demerara sugar and 2-3 tbsp of water. Prepare the cake beating the eggs with the sugar, add the olive oil and the flour together with the bicarbonate of soda and the baking powder. Finally add two thirds of the cranberry and mix well. Pour the mixture in a greased cake tin and finish scattering the remnant cranberries on top. Bake for 30-45 minutes at 180° C.

Biscuits with buckwheat flour

You need: 200 g of buckwheat flour, 2 eggs, 100 g of golden granulated sugar, 2 tbsp of olive oil, half a tsp of baking powder and 50 g of dried cranberries.

Mix flour and sugar in a bowl, add the eggs, the baking powder, the dried cranberries and the olive oil. Mingle bits evenly using a fork and then knead the dough. Roll out the dough and cut the biscuits using a cookie cutter, finally set them on a greased oven tray. Bake for 20 minutes, or till darker, at 180° C.

Cake with rye flour

You need: 350 g of rye flour, 3 eggs, 3 tbsp of sunflower oil, 170 g of muscovado sugar, grated zest and juice of an orange, one tsp of baking powder and half a tsp of bicarbonate of soda. Orange peels sticks and melted dark chocolate to decorate.

Beat the yolk of the eggs with the sugar and add the orange zest and the juice. Then add half of the flour, the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and the sunflower oil. Whip the whites of the eggs till stiff and blend them in the mixture as well. Add the rest of the flour and pour the mixture in a greased tin cake. Bake for 30-45 minutes at 180° C. When cool, decorate with the orange peel sticks and pour some melted dark chocolate on top.

Biscuits with rye flour

You need: 200 g of rye flour, 2 eggs, 50 g of melted butter, 100 g of muscovado sugar, grated zest of a lemon, half a tsp on baking powder, half a tsp of cinnamon.

Mix flour and sugar in a bowl. Add the eggs, the lemon zest, the cinnamon, the baking powder and the melted butter. Mingle it using a fork and then knead the dough. Roll out the dough and cut the biscuits using a cookie cutter. Finally set them on a greased oven tray. Bake for 20 minutes, or till darker, at 180° C.

I hope you enjoy them all!

Eurovision contest: Occidentali’s Karma and The Naked Ape

The Eurovision contest is an entertaining, diverse and controversial showcase, where catchy tunes mix with tacky performances. But I always enjoy it, especially the voting bit when the countries conveniently cast their votes according to specific geographical areas (all the eastern countries vote for each other, the same for the southern ones and so on). The UK ends up being a bit isolated, but these are the disadvantages (and advantages) of being an island.

I am particularly fond of the Italian song this year, Occidentali’s Karma (Westerners’ Karma), sang by Francesco Gabbani, an extremely funny, clever and fresh tune. The song is catchy and the lyrics cracked me up. It can be defined a postmodern intertextual high quality text, or to say it in a simpler way, it ridicules all of us mixing quotations from different sources. There is a good list of the ideas and texts it refers to here: http://wiwibloggs.com/2017/02/15/occidentalis-karma-lyrics/174193/  (with the English translation of the lyrics at the bottom), which I am going to summarize briefly as well as adding some personal considerations.

There is also a video clip with English subtitles on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zNfw-GDm20

Here is the lyrics:

OCCIDENTALI’S KARMA

Essere o dover essere

Il dubbio amletico

Contemporaneo come l’uomo del neolitico

Nella tua gabbia 2×3 mettiti comodo

Intellettuali nei caffè

Internettologi

Soci onorari al gruppo dei selfisti anonimi

L’intelligenza è démodé

Risposte facili

Dilemmi inutili

AAA cercasi storie dal gran finale,

Sperasi

Comunque vada, panta rei

And “Singing in the rain”

Lezioni di Nirvana

C’è il Buddha in fila indiana

Per tutti un’ora d’aria, di gloria (ale!)

La folla grida un mantra

L’evoluzione inciampa

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Occidentali’s karma

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Piovono gocce di Chanel

Su corpi asettici

Mettiti in salvo dall’odore dei tuoi simili

Tutti tuttologi col web

Coca dei popoli

Oppio dei poveri

AAA cercasi umanità virtuale

Sex appeal

Comunque vada, panta rei

And “Singing in the rain”

Lezioni di Nirvana

C’è il Buddha in fila indiana

Per tutti un’ora d’aria, di gloria (ale!)

La folla grida un mantra

L’evoluzione inciampa

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Occidentali’s karma

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Quando la vita si distrae

Cadono gli uomini

Occidentali’s karma

Occidentali’s karma

La scimmia si rialza

Namaste, ale!

Lezioni di Nirvana

C’è il Buddha in fila indiana

Per tutti un’ora d’aria, di gloria (ale!)

La folla grida un mantra

L’evoluzione inciampa

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Occidentali’s karma

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Om

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

To be or to have to be

Hamlet’s doubt

As current as the Neolithic man

Get comfy in your 2 x 3 cage

Intellectuals in cafés

Internet experts

Honorary members of the selfie-addicted anonymous

Cleverness is out of fashion

Easy answers

Pointless dilemmas

AAA grand endings wanted

Hoped for,

Whatever happens, panta rhei

And “Singing in the Rain”.

Nirvana lessons

There’s Buddha in single line

Recreation time for everyone, a moment of glory (ale!)

The crowd is shouting a mantra

Evolution stumbles

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

Westerners’ karma

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

Drops of Chanel are pouring

On aseptic bodies

Save yourself from the smell of your own kind

All know-all with the web

Cocaine of the masses

Opiate of the poor

AAA virtual humanity wanted

Sex appeal

Whatever happens, panta rhei

And “Singing in The Rain”

Nirvana lessons

There’s Buddha in single line

Recreation time for everyone, a moment of glory (ale!)

The crowd is shouting a mantra

Evolution stumbles

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

Westerners’ karma

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

When life is distracted

Men drop

Westerners’ karma

Westerners’ karma

The ape gets back on its feet

Namaste, go!

Nirvana lessons

There’s Buddha in single line,

recreation time for everyone, a moment of glory (ale!)

The crowd is shouting a mantra

Evolution stumbles

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

Westerners’ karma

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

Om

The beginning refers to the famous Hamlet’s soliloquy (to be or not to be) and Eric Fromm (to have or to be). The song carries on quoting the alcoholics anonymous (which now are selfie-anonymous, alluding to our attention-seeking addiction), advertising sites (AAA, everything can be effectively advertised) and the famous ‘Singing in the rain’ by Gene Kelly, which seems just to rhyme with panta rhei (everything flows, by the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus), but it is not so simple. In the film Singing in the Rain the main actress (Kathy) is dubbed by Lina, the nice girl with an angel voice, as it often happened when silent films were converted into a talkie. At the end the curtain lifts and the audience finally sees that Lina is the real star. It’s clearly a sham.

The song mocks serious and pretentious attitudes not only towards Oriental philosophies and religions (which the Westerners use as a way to relax, have fun or self-advertising) but in a more general way it teases the way Westerners use and misuse everything. The world has become a big supermarket, we go around and grasp whatever we need with little respect for others (other people, animals and the environment). The funny thing is that we are pretty unaware of it and believe (or pretend) we are doing nothing wrong, we are the best. But eventually who cares, panta rhei.

The cherry on top is the dancing naked ape (referring to the famous Desmond Morris’s book The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal published in 1967), who always rises like the phoenix from the ashes. Its instinctual, playful and aggressive behaviour represents us all at our best. This is who we are at the end, let’s acknowledge it. I don’t think this is referring only to sex, it’s about all our attitudes towards the others: ‘life is distracted’, the ape comes back and ‘men drop’ (cadono gli uomini). We take advantage of others, cheat them, play with them in a more or less abusive way. We are all dancing apes pretending to be civilized respectful humans, and we need to acknowledge it.

According to Desmond Morris, this happened because our cultural and technological progress developed too fast and our biological characteristics couldn’t keep up with it, we would need some million years to bridge the gap. Consequently our civilized goals are too high a stake sometimes and we can’t cope with it, we fall back on our instinctual side. Or our instinctual side is something we can’t get rid of to survive biologically, so ‘we should tailor our intelligent opportunist advances to our basic behavioural requirements’.

Other references are to Karl Marx (Religion is the opiate of the masses, which becomes ‘All know-all with the web cocaine of the masses opiate of the poor’) and Oriental spiritual terminology (Nirvana, Mantra, Namaste), which are not mentioned with disrespectful intentions but are just a way to mock the people who practice them without really understanding the meaning of it.

The quotations are well chosen, a clever pastiche that communicates a clear thought-provoking message. It is a warning or just a way to say that the king is naked and we can all see it, open your eyes and don’t make much fuss about tolerance and consideration towards the others. We just grab what we can and how we can.

The video clip is brilliant as well, Francesco Gabbani is a good singer and dancer, and above all it is his body language and facial expression that spices it up, he winks at us in a typical knowing Italian way. You know what I mean, he seems to say. And we do.

The song won Sanremo Music Festival 2017 beating Fiorella Mannoia’s Che sia benedetta (Let her be blessed), a moving song about the beauty of life but no match with Occidentali’s Karma.

Will it win Eurovision contest as well? Let’s wait and see. I believe it deserves our votes.

Lightkeepers by Elizabeth Burns

Elizabeth Burns’ last collection (Lightkeepers, Wayleave Press, 2016) was edited by her friends and fellow-poets Gerrie Fellows and Jane Routh; it puts together the poems she wrote during the last years of her life. She didn’t have the time to publish it but asked her friends to do it for her. A few of the poems appeared in poetry reviews and in anthologies but most of them were unpublished when she died of cancer in August 2015.

A new fresh voice emerges from the collection, the reader has the sense of meeting her personally while reading her lines, they have the authenticity that only unpublished poems sometimes have. Her capacity of observing and perceiving reality, of making the invisible visible (as she said speaking about women’s voice), and the ordinary relevant, is so acute, insightful and unique that it made me experience things in new ways.

When she writes about some duck eggs (ten dozen duck eggs she found on her doorstep one day):

..... I love their magnitude,

their plenty, the rows and rows of them,

the different ways of ordering and counting them.

Their ranks of sameness, and their slight differences.

She communicates the preciousness of the gift and also the innate beauty of the eggs so common and special, a work of nature and of art at the same time to admire and cherish:

.......I want to keep them

on this windowsill and gaze at them each day –

their lovely shapes, the oval clear and pure,

as if they were holy, made for ritual;

.....

and the way they are contained and unassuming,

holding inside themselves a freight of possibility.

A fruitful force emanates from these lines, they don’t seem to be written by a person at the end of her life, on the contrary they are vital, full of hope, compassion and care.

Her masterly use of enjambment in The Spool expresses the inner joy and mutual close communion in the act of sewing up some buttons with her daughter on the new dress the girl is going to wear in a school trip to an art gallery:

And here she is, early in the hot June morning, light on her feet

in her pretty shoes setting off with her camera, her sketchbook,

on the school trip to the gallery, the art college show; threading her way

down the street, heading out into the promise of this summer’s day.

In Clay, Plum and Lightkeepers, her last pamphlets and collection all published by Wayleave press, her poetry definitely develops in a deeply imaginative and free way, her poems are spare, tight and careless of what is inessential; instead she goes to the core of things. While her body was inevitably shrinking and her hair was falling, her poetry bloomed.

The intensity of everyday, strongly felt experiences is, for example, in the simple act of buying a second hand dresser in an antique shop:

a blue-painted dresser that was old and worn

and had six little drawers with knobs for handles,

a dresser that would fit exactly into my kitchen

........................................

The dresser is scratched and some of its paint

is wearing away, but its wood glows in the evening sun

and it holds a bowl of oranges, perhaps, or a jug of roses,

green candles, blown eggs, tulips, herbs, postcards;

The poem  Lightkeepers is about following the traces of R.L. Stevenson in the east coast of Scotland near Edinburgh. His presence is everywhere together with the memories of her daughters’ childhood at the seaside. The Isle of May and Fidra lighthouses remind her of the writer’s family and are ‘beacons in darkness’, but all the happiness she gathered is ‘fragile as glass’ and momentary, ‘a lantern-slide lit for a moment’. The complexity of this poem seems to be resolved in the lines: ‘We’re lightkeepers, making ready/for sundown, revealing that tiny glimmer and refracting it’, showing the value of ‘the gleam/that makes us human’ and its inevitable fickleness. A sense of transience is in the last line: ‘we take that light we can to keep us through the night.’

Going through the collection is like having a journey in an apparently ordinary world perceptively observed and deftly written. From the comfort of the first poem, The recovery room (‘the tests are clear − ...the winter in your skin’), to the last one, Spiral (which was chosen to be attached to the scaffolding covering the Poetry Library in Edinburgh in October 2015), one spiralling sentence in two verses celebrating our earthen roots but also our never ending aspiration to something more, a spiritual dimension, whirling up into the sky and beyond.

Spring time: hot cross buns and PhD proposal

I had a very exciting early spring time working hard as an IB examiner, preparing my literature lessons and assessments for my students and above all digging deep for my PhD proposal. I had also time to try new recipes: I experimented new cakes and, being Easter near, hot cross buns.

The brighter, warmer days and the energy boost that comes naturally with spring time gave me the right trigger to work on my PhD proposal and submit it. The idea came to me after reading The Blind Assassin, a true masterpiece. So many connections came to my mind together with a total sincere admiration for what I consider a real work of art, that I started to study about a year ago, research and collect critical works on Margaret Atwood and link it to other books I read in the past. At first my ideas were generic and confused but then they took shape and focused on the role of female characters, how their identities developed and were influenced by previous female characters in western literature (but not only in literature, in visual art and music as well). An intertextual kind of research sprang from it! I repeatedly visited the British Library in search of texts to support my work. It is such a beautiful place to spend time in, there are exhibitions, bookshops and comfortable reading rooms that looked like pleasant lounges. I felt so deeply motivated and younger, going back to my university years when I used to spend hours and hours in the Biblioteca Nazionale (National Library) in Rome or in the Vatican Library.

Studying in a library adds concentration and cosiness to the research as well as a sort of solemn aura: it is the temple of knowledge and you are in it to accomplish a task of some importance. And there is the pleasure of reading and researching that goes with it, of course. An exciting process of studying, understanding more, solving problems hoping to reach your goal at the end. All my passion and commitment to Margaret Atwood finally has a goal and I can dedicate my next years to the study of her work. What a great electrifying adventure!

In a typical woman multi-task mood (and in accordance with an postmodern Atwoodian mixture of genres and registers), I also had time to experiment a hot cross buns recipe from a magazine, but I adapted it as usual. Here it is:

You need: 300 ml of milk, 60 g of butter, 250 g of strong white flour, 250 g of strong brown flour, 100 g of golden caster sugar, 7 g sachet of fast action bread yeast, 1 egg (lightly beaten), 100 g of sultanas, grated zest of one lemon, 1 apple (peeled and grated), 1 tsp of cinnamon; for the crosses you need: 150 g of plain flour and 100 ml of water; to glaze you need: 3 tbsp of warm apricot jam or marmalade.

Warm the milk and butter and let the butter melt. Mix the flours in a large bowl, add half a tsp of salt, sugar, yeast, then pour the warm milk and butter in. Mix it with a fork, then knead the dough by hand till smooth. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let it rest in a warm place for at least two hours till it doubles in size. Remove the damp cloth and knead the dough adding sultanas, lemon zest, apple and cinnamon. Add some flour if it is too sticky. Divide the dough into round pieces and set them on an oiled oven tray. Prepare the dough for the crosses mixing the plain flour with water, roll it out and cut strips to arrange on top of the buns, securing them with water. Cover the tray with cling film and let the buns rest in a warm place for an hour. Bake the buns for 15-20 minutes at 200° C till golden. Finally brush the jam (or marmalade) on top when the buns are still hot. And enjoy!

Some recipes my mother taught me

My mum’s dishes are very simple but extremely tasty. She sticks to two basic rules in her cooking mode/approach: give it time and don’t make it too elaborate. Here are a few recipes she taught me in my recent visit to Italy.

Pasta e ceci (pasta with chickpeas)

Soak 400 g of chickpeas for 36 hours or use a canned product.  Boil them in salty water for about one hour. Warm some extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan with a clove of garlic. When the garlic become lightly brown remove it and add the chickpeas and the water. Let it boil and add some rosemary, three tbsp of passata and 200 g of pasta (macaroni). Let the pasta cook and serve it warm.

Coda alla vaccinara (oxtail stew)

This is an old recipe typical of Rome. You need about a kilo of chopped oxtail (or better veal tail) and plenty of celery. First boil 3-4 celery stalks in 2 litres stock for half an hour. In a pan fry some pancetta cubes in extra virgin olive oil and add some chopped celery, a carrot, an onion, one clove of garlic and parsley, add the oxtail, salt and let it cook. After half an hour add a glass of white wine, when it evaporates add 4 tbsp of passata. Finally add the water where you had cooked the celery stalks till it covers the oxtail. After half an hour add the celery stalks chopped. Let it simmer and the water evaporate. Serve warm with mashed potatoes.

Carciofi alla romana (artichokes in the Roman way)

The most difficult thing here is to find the artichokes, good tender ones. There’s plenty in Italy in December and my mother can pick the right ones just pressing her fingers on the outer leaves. Once you have them (let’s say from 5 to 10 pieces) you need to get rid of some of the outer leaves and cut the upper part to get rid of the thorns. Ideally only the stem and the most tender leaves around the choke should be left. Once it’s clean, pass half a lemon around it or soak it in water and lemon. Place a piece of garlic (a quarter of a clove) and some leaves of parsley inside, add salt and pepper. Cook in a pan head down with plenty of oil and some water. Cover the pan with a lid and put a paper (kind of bread bag paper) under the lid so the water doesn’t evaporate otherwise the artichokes will burn. It needs about half an hour to cook.

Minestrone soup

You can make this dish with the vegetable you like, my mum uses carrots, courgettes, broccoli, celery, cauliflower, potatoes, spinach and onions. She chops them and boils them in water for about two hours. She adds stock to the water, salt and some passata as well. She usually has it without pasta but you can add some macaroni if you like or you can also puree it if you prefer. She only adds some extra virgin olive oil and parmigiano once she serves it.

Spaghetti ai frutti di mare (spaghetti with seafood)

We had this dish on Christmas Eve when we usually have fish. Cook the sea food (mussels, king prawns and squid) on a frying pan with some extra virgin olive oil and a clove of garlic. Add salt, pepper, chilli, parsley and 3-4 tbsp of passata. Add some black olives as well if you like. Let it simmer for half an hour. Cook 250g of spaghetti in salty water, drain it and mix it with the seafood in the frying pan. Toss it and let it warm for five minutes. Serve it warm.

Torta di mele (cake with apples)

This is a special cake with apples cooked in white wine my mum and I made during Christmas holidays. You need to peel, core and slice the apples (about 800 g), then cook them in 150 g of white wine and 100 g of water with 80 g of sugar. When they are soft set them on a plate and pour the juice of one lemon on them. Let the wine and water boil till it thickens to make a sort of syrup. Prepare the cake by mixing 280 g of flour, 1 tsp of baking powder and half a tsp of bicarbonate of soda, 70 g of melted butter, 4 yolk of eggs, the juice and grated zest of a lemon, 120 g of sugar and the whites of the eggs whipped till stiff. Pour half of the mixture in a greased tin cake, spread half of the sliced apples on it, then pour the rest of the mixture on top and finish with the remaining apples. Bake the cake for about half an hour at 180 °C. When it is still warm pour the syrup on it and let it cool before serving.