Food guide for River Café

One of London’s most prestigious and established Italian restaurants choses Blue Guide Italy Food Companion for its 2019 gift hamper. The River Café of Hammersmith produces an annual Limited Edition Gift Box “packed full of the Italian ingredients we carefully source and use every day in the River Cafe kitchen”.

Blue Guide Italy Food Companion »

The River Café’s 2019 Limited Edition Large Gift Box »

About Blue Guide Italy Food Companion:

“How to enjoy the best of Italian food: understand the menu and know how to order in a restaurant or street market. Complements the Blue Guides’ classic guide-book range as preparation for and accompaniment to any visit to Italy. Comprehensive coverage from pizza and pasta to rare regional delicacies and fine wines. Separate sections on seasonal food, Mediterranean fish, wines and aperitifs, star chefs. Extensive phrasebook—divided into ‘what it means’ (Italian into English including a glossary) and ‘how to ask for’ (English into Italian). Good-looking with stylish black and white line drawings, it would also work well as a gift item.”

The River Café’s 2019 Limited Edition Large Gift Box>>

Hungary Food Companion

The brand new Blue Guide Hungary Food Companion is now out. A handy lexicon of Magyar food vocabulary, with a miscellany of culinary information (and a few traditional recipes) thrown into the pot alongside.

Hungary typically has blisteringly hot summers but curiously no real summer cuisine. A cold fruit soup made from strawberry, apricot or sour cherry, followed by stuffed marrow or stuffed paprika, is about as light as it gets in the traditional repertoire. Summer is also the season for “főzelék”. As the interwar court chef Sándor Újváry noted, “It is needless to list the types of főzelék that belong to the domestic culinary repertoire and which are prepared on a daily basis in so many kitchens: they are all universally known…and the perfect preparation of these well-known types of főzelék requires little effort and few ingredients.”

Sounds good. But what is a főzelék? The name roughly means a boil-up, which is essentially accurate: a főzelék is a dish of boiled vegetable, sometimes puréed and sometimes not, mixed with a roux and eaten with a spoon. Almost any vegetable can be used, from the humble potato (krumpli) to the more highly prized asparagus (spárga). On menus, you will commonly find cabbage (káposzta) főzelék, spinach (spenót) főzelék, pumpkin (tök) főzelék, green pea (zöldborsó) főzelék. In the market this morning we found yellow string beans (vajbab). So yellow string bean főzelék it was to be.

Here they are in their raw state:

And this is the recipe we followed to turn them into főzelék.

1. Wash and chop the beans, into sections roughly 2–3cm long. Cook them until tender in lightly salted water (we had some leftover chicken stock, so we used that instead).

2. Prepare the roux. With a wire whisk, combine flour and sour cream and powdered paprika. We used three heaped teaspoons of flour, one heaped teaspoon of paprika and two tablespoons of sour cream.

3. Drain the beans, retaining the water. Then gradually add the water to the roux, mixing all the while.

4. Put the mixture on a low heat, stirring until it thickens. Add the beans. Salt to taste if necessary. Serve.

This is what it looked like.

Simple but delicious.

Baroque-era spinach patties

Anna Bornemisza (c. 1630–88) was the daughter of an army captain, a noblewoman in her own right and, by marriage (in 1653, to Mihály Apafi), Princess of Transylvania. The story of her husband’s family, and the turbulent times they had to deal with, is covered in Blue Guide Travels in Transylvania: the Greater Târnava Valley. Anna was clever and highly educated. In fact, some historians accuse her husband of having no interest in or understanding of politics and of leaving key decisions to his nimble-witted spouse. Whatever the truth, Anna was also a devoted wife and mother of 14 children (only one son survived to adulthood). She wrote detailed household accounts, which have survived, as well as a famous cookery book (in 1680). Whether or not the cookbook was intended for the instruction of others or whether it was more notes for herself of successful recipes, I do not know. Perhaps the latter, because the recipes are far from detailed, and even by the standards of the times give almost no practical help. Her recipe for ‘Spinach Cake’, for example, reads as follows:

Take spinach. Wilt it in water and squeeze out the liquid. Add parmesan cheese and grated bread. Add mace, pepper, egg yolk and buttermilk. Cook and mix together. Make a cake from it and when it is cooked, serve hot.

It is difficult to make something when you have no idea what it is meant to look like or how it is supposed to taste. How to decide on quantities? We made ‘spinach cake’ for two. By ‘spinach cake’, we assumed a kind of patty, and we added the ingredients proportionally, in order to give it a stiffish consistency. That meant, for half a kilo of spinach, two egg yolks and about three tablespoons of breadcrumbs, with enough buttermilk to make it all stick together without turning to concrete and plenty of grated parmesan (interesting that the recipe specifies parmesan: what does that say about 17th-century trading relations between Tranyslvania and Northern Italy?). We didn’t use mace. It seemed more practical to opt for grated nutmeg, to avoid ending up with hard, gritty bits in the patty. It’s also worth noting that the recipe does not call for salt. And it does not need it. The parmesan fulfils that role.

It is very quick to make. Result? It doesn’t look very elegant or appetising but it tastes delicious. If we had had a set of chef’s forming rings, we could have shaped it better. But we didn’t.

Perfect paprika chicken

István Czifray was the nom de plume of István Czövek, master chef at the court of the Palatine Joseph, Habsburg governor of Hungary in the early 19th century. Czifray’s book of recipes and household tips (including instructions for making perfumes and pomades) first appeared in 1816. Soon to be entitled Magyar Nemzeti Szakácskönyve (Hungarian National Cookbook), it went into numerous editions, the last coming out in 1888. It is an important landmark in the annals of Hungarian culinary history. Czifray includes a recipe for the signature Hungarian dish of paprika chicken (paprikás csirke). Since we had recently eaten this dish at Kárpátia, and old-fashioned restaurant in central Budapest whose opulent interior decoration is a sort of pastiche of the Hungarian Parliament and the Matthias Church, and where tourists’ eardrums are cheerfully assaulted by the squealing of a gypsy band, we were curious to see how Czifray’s recipe measured up.

The Kárpátia version of the dish looked like this:

Ours wouldn’t look quite like that. We weren’t planning to make galuska (that’s a subject for another post). The key thing to get right was the sauce.

Here is Czifray’s recipe:

“Pluck and draw a pair of young chickens. Wash them and cut into equal-sized pieces. Lightly salt these. Finely chop an onion and in a copper skillet fry in butter until translucent. Add the chicken pieces and half a dessert spoon of paprika powder. Cover and steam until tender, shaking periodically. Sprinkle with a little flour, add a scant quantity of meat broth and a few spoonfuls of sour cream. Leave to cook on a low heat, carefully skimming off the foam that forms on the surface. Then serve.”

As with many old recipes, it is hazy on precise quantities and gives no information about cooking time. This is something you either have to know from experience or guess.

We didn’t take whole chickens, we began with chicken legs, bought from the butcher that afternoon. Apart from that, we followed the initial instructions, chopping a bunch of spring onions and sautéeing them in a thick wad of butter in a heavy casserole pan (cast iron, we didn’t have copper). Half a dessert spoon of paprika powder sounded rather little, but anyway, we didn’t add much more (maybe a level dessert spoon). It was good-quality paprika, from Kalocsa.

Covering and steaming without the chicken pieces sticking to the pan is tricky. You might want to—as we did—add a little of the meat broth at this stage. We put in a large ladleful of chicken stock that we had made a couple of days previously.

“Cook until tender” is a difficult instruction. How long is that? To be sure that the chicken is cooked through, you want to cook it for at least 45 minutes in total. We reckoned half an hour at this stage, and then a further 20 minutes once the sour cream and flour have gone in.

Sprinkling with flour and then adding sour cream sounded like a recipe for lumpy sauce but oddly enough it worked fine. You really only need a scattering of flour. For “scant quantity” of broth, we read about 200ml. But if it starts drying out, add more. A good tasty stock won’t spoil the dish’s flavour. “A few spoonfuls” of sour cream we interpreted as three or four generously heaped dessert spoons.

We stirred all this in, left the chicken on the lowest flame for a further 20 minutes or so. We didn’t need to skim off any foam—none formed. But we did add a little more salt.

It looked like this (see below). And it was excellent. Even though the sauce didn’t look as flawlessly smooth as Kárpátia’s, in fact it tasted better. The Kárpátia version lacked the spring onions, which really make all the difference.

A spring recipe from 1891

In some ways Ágnes Zilahy (1848–1908) is the Mrs Beeton of Hungarian cookery. Her publications of recipes, along with tips on household management, made her a household name in her own lifetime and her Valódi Magyar Szakácskönyv (Real Hungarian Cookery), a book of explicitly Hungarian dishes (i.e. not derived from other cuisines), went into a second edition within seven months of its release in 1891.

The daughter of a well-to-do lawyer, Zilahy was suddenly flung on her own resources with her father and all eight siblings died, leaving her alone in the world at the age of 18. Her first husband squandered her fortune; her second marriage was also unhappy and ended in divorce. She eked out a living as a glove-maker until persuaded by Count Sándor Teleky, a hero of the Hungarian Uprising against the Habsburgs of 1848–9, to compile her recipes into a book. This she did and never looked back. We decided to test one of those recipes out.

It’s late April and the markets are beginning to fill up with fresh produce. We chose Zilahy’s recipe for stuffed marrow. She in fact titles the recipe Töltött ugorka, “stuffed cucumber”. But we couldn’t really imagine stuffing cucumbers. Marrow it had to be. Her instructions begin as follows: You need a green “ugorka” as long as a span, well-grown and thick but still young and tender.

So far so good. Next step:

Remove its skin and cut it in half lengthways. Allow one “ugorka” per person. Remove the seeds from the centre.

That part was easy. Now for the stuffing. Zilahy recommends leftover roast pork or beef, which should be finely minced, seasoned with salt and a teaspoon of crushed pepper and mixed with 120g of “rizskása”. Here comes the perennial problem with modern cookery: we don’t make enough use of leftovers, or, when we come to pick something from a recipe book, we don’t have any leftovers to work with and have to start from scratch.

Why is this a problem? Not only because of waste, but because of flavour. Leftover roast pork, whose flavours have had time to develop and coalesce, would be much tastier than the fresh minced pork we had bought from the butcher that same morning. To make the meat more savoury, we sautéed it in oil with diced onion, salt and pepper, some dried sage and crushed caraway seed.

Now for the “rizskása”. This “rice gruel” is difficult to translate. It is essentially a dish of boiled rice flavoured in some way. Zilahy’s cookbook has two separate recipes: for rizskása with onion and rizskása with mushrooms. We chose the former as we had no mushrooms. All it involves is boiling up rice in salted water and mixing with glazed chopped onions and parsley. One thing to note: here, as for most Hungarian cooking, it is best to use medium-grain rice. Long-grain rice is not glutinous enough and the ingredients won’t combine and adhere properly.

Back to Zilahy’s recipe:

Mix the meat and rice well together, then fill the hollowed out marrow halves with this stuffing. Place the stuffed marrows together in a large casserole, with the stuffed side facing upwards. Then fill the casserole with warm salted water and immediately add to the liquid six spoonfuls of strong vinegar, otherwise the marrows will fall apart when cooking.

We did all this, the only difference being that instead of warm salted water we used warm chicken stock, again afraid that our this-morning’s meat would not be flavourful enough and needed some external help.

When the marrows are cooked, add a lightly browned roux made from an egg-sized amount of fat and a large wooden spoonful of flour. When the roux is hot and beginning to brown, add a cup of cold water to it, to stop it from going lumpy. Quickly pour this over the marrow and cook together for a few minutes.

Zilahy gives no indication of how hot the oven should be (or indeed if the marrows should be cooked in the oven or on the hob), nor how long the cooking will take, nor whether the casserole should be covered or not. We chose to bake them uncovered and—because we hadn’t followed her advice of removing the skins—the process took an hour at 200ºC. But ours is a very old oven. In a more efficient fan oven, it should take less. Not covering the pan meant that the meat stuffing went pleasantly crunchy on top.

Zilahy recommends serving this dish with sour cream (tejföl) and beef topside (sült felsál). We didn’t think we needed yet more meat with it. But the sour cream was wonderful.

A tale of two Camparis

Monday in Milan was forecast to be the “apex” of Northern Italy’s recent stormy weather.  It did not disappoint, with poor light, driving rain and strong winds. Not an ideal morning to find oneself exposed to the elements armed only with a €3 folding umbrella, much of the time blown inside out, in the 45-minute line zigzagging across the piazza to enter the Duomo.  But such are the exigencies of Blue Guides research, and the deadline for the important new Blue Guide Lombardy–finally completing the enormous task of updating Blue Guide Northern Italy region by region–looms.

After the calm inside the Duomo had helped revive the soggy and flagging spirits, something stronger was required. As you leave the cathedral from its west end, you see a welcoming sign–CAMPARI–across the piazza on your right.  It marks the famous Camparino in Galleria bar, first opened by Davide Campari in 1915, a shrine to the sticky, herbally-bitter red stuff beloved of cocktail aficionados the world over.

On arrival, we are ignored by the staff. Hopefully entering the pretty seated area to the right, we are told by the waitress that the sole remaining empty table is only to be sat at by parties of four–we constitute an inadequate two. Back in the airy and elegant bar area, which doubles as a holding pen, a brisk, waistcoated gentleman, who seems to be in charge and holds sway from behind a high till, promises to help but then disappears. Fortunately, a smart barman comes to our aid with two Campari and sodas (he is later rebuked for this by his colleague at the till, as we should have paid first).  The drinks are excellent: ice cold Campari stored at sub-zero temperatures is unctuously poured into narrow tall chilled glasses. Then soda water, also ice cold and very fizzy, is piped in at sufficient pressure to create a foam on top, with proportions of around 2 measures of Campari to 3 of soda. No ice is added to dilute and detract from the pleasure. Olives and so on are liberally available from the bar. Delicious and a reasonable €11 for two.

But could it have been better?  In the spirit of intrepid Blue Guides enquiry we head a hundred yards up the Via dei Mercanti to the brand new Starbucks–the first in Italy, dubbed (I presume by the company) “the most beautiful Starbucks in the world” and designated a “Roastery”.  It has been inserted into the attractive Palazzo Delle Poste building on Piazza Cordusio. A Campari and soda? “Of course”, the smiling greeter who smilingly greets us at the door replies, directing us upstairs past enormous and impressive pseudo-industrial machinery, maybe connected to coffee roasting (or is it mail sorting–this was a post office?) to the bar in the gallery at the back.  We perch on stools and a helpful mixologist promptly takes our order. Not much happens for a bit. When the drinks arrive they are “on the rocks”. And the “rocks” are not just a couple of ice cubes in the bottom of a tumbler, the drinks have been poured over large glasses brim-full of ice.  This time €20 for two, plus green olives and cheese. The design of the internal space is bold, the resulting effect reminiscent of the more high end bits of airport retail.

The verdict: well dear reader, while wishing Starbucks well with their vision and congratulating them on their service and the buzz of their new venue, you will not be surprised that the Blue Guides goes for Camparino, for its atmosphere, decor, history, sense of place and quality of drinks every time.  Even the staff turned out friendly eventually, and while we do not anticipate a global roll-out with Camparinos in every shopping mall and main square on the planet any time soon, well, maybe it’s better that way …

A.T.

Best restaurants in Brescia

The real highlight of Brescia, capital of the Lombard province of the same name, must be its recently re-opened Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo – one of the best provincial art museums of the world. But to read about that you will have to buy the new Blue Guide Lombardy, Milan and the Italian Lakes, available from early 2019. For now you will have to satisfy yourself with food and drink highlights from a recent research visit to this excellent and under-rated city and its environs:

Bars

Chinotto: cool bar with tables outside on the pedestrianised Corso Palestro, itself an extension of the attractive broad Corso Zanardelli with a double arcade all along its north side. Chinotto prides itself on the best pirlò in town – the local variant of spritz made not with the ubiquitous Aperol but with Campari, also a Lombard product. Ideal for an early evening sharpener. Corso Palestro, 25122 Brescia BS

Bar in the Hotel Vittoria: the stately Hotel Vittoria is Brescia’s grand hotel, on the other side of the elegant colonnaded rationalist block that forms one side of the Piazza Vittoria with its red marble pulpit built for Mussolini to address the crowds, and from the 30s to the 50s start and finish of the glamorous Mille Miglia car race to Rome and back.  The Hotel has a stylish bar, grand inside and relaxed outside under the arcade, recommended for its ambience and cocktails and the barman’s knowledge of the new wave of artisanal vermouths from this, the heart of vermouth country. Via X Giornate, 20, 25121 Brescia BS

Restaurants

Brescia

La Vineria: Good quality, somewhat more inventive than standard restaurant fare.  Classical and friendly atmosphere, don’t be put off by the small and empty ground floor visible from the arcaded street front: this does not mark a lack of support for this local institution but the fact that most guests opt for its busier, larger basement. Via X Giornate, 20, 25121 Brescia BS

Trattoria Al Fontenone: Traditional trattoria, good quality and unfussy. Via Dei Musei 47/a, 25121 Brescia BS

Il Nazareni: You might not have come to Northern Italy for Palestinian cooking, but this busy and fashionable new restaurant is a local favourite.  Clean and fresh hummus, taboulé, parsley salads etc. Via Gasparo da Salò, 22, 25122 Brescia BS

Monte Isola on Lake Iseo

Trattoria Pizzeria Bar Ai Tre Archi: a waterfront eatery in a seasonal tourist destination is risky. Ai Tre Archi–“at the three arches”–is unpretentious, on our visit the food was local and good, the white wine by the carafe excellent and the service friendly. via Peschiera Maraglio 170/n, 25050 Monte Isola BS

Salò on Lake Garda

Trattoria-Bar Cantinone: One (narrow) block back from the lake, traditional and genuine, including fish dishes from local lake fish (the fish antipasto was excellent). 19, Piazza Sant’Antonio, 25087 Salò BS

A.T.

Extreme dairy farming in Sauris

View of Sauris di Sotto. Photo: Johann Jaritz.

Visitors to the holiday resort of Forni di Sopra in the Carnic Dolomites, close to the source of the Tagliamento river, will be surprised to see that there is not much of a river in town. This is because a large proportion of the water is tapped at source and piped along an 18km tunnel bored in the rock to the northeast, to Sauris/Zahre (Friuli), to help fill an artificial lake which powers a hydroelectric plant completed after WW2. The dam—and more than that the all-weather motor road required for the building process (both engineering feats at the time)—marked the end of the isolation of Sauris, a settlement scattered on a plateau some 1200–1400m above sea level.

Before the road was built, access was severely restricted; indeed it was total isolation in the winter months up until the early 1950s, when as soon as it was practicable at the end of winter, an athletic carabiniere would be dispatched on foot all the way to Sauris from Forni di Sopra to check up on the community. Unlike the other Dolomites villages that used to make a living by dairy farming and kept their cows in the valleys in winter, moving them to the high pastures (malghe) in the summer, the people of the alpine plateau (then as now in the low hundreds) overwintered at high altitude and it must have been hard.

They lived in isolation for months but they are still here to tell the story. Indeed, as Sauris re-invents itself as a successful year-round holiday resort and purveyor of speciality foods, it is also going back to its roots, which sheds some light on the origins of such a challenging lifestyle.

The key is the language. Centuries of isolation have preserved the ‘Lingua Saurana’, which is now recognised by the Italian state as a separate language. You may not hear much of it spoken these days (apparently it is mainly used within the family) but it has its own museum (in Sauris di Sotto; open in the summer Mon, Thur, Fri 10–12 & 4–6; Sat and Sun 10–12 & 3–6), choir, publications, poetry and liturgical texts and it is taught in the local school, though after the first wave of enthusiasm it is now no longer compulsory, just an option. Eminent philologists have pored over it. A variant of German, it has over the centuries incorporated some of the local Friulano from the neighbouring valleys and a number of German elements from across the mountains; its roots, however, are further away, in southern Bavaria; it is a form of the Mittelhochdeutsch of the 13th century. Documents (unfortunately lost in a fire) testified to a community from 1280. According to local lore, the founding fathers were a couple of stray soldiers/deserters who abandoned the wars that were ravaging Europe and embraced extreme dairy farming. They had with them some relics of St Oswald, which fostered pilgrim traffic and accounts for the dedication of the present church. (Quite what Durham Cathedral, which boasts the complete body of this 7th-century Northumbrian saint, makes of the matter is not known.)

Today the Sauris plateau is for the discerning. There is no through traffic, which means the only visitors are people that chose to negotiate the winding road from Ampezzo; but one is richly rewarded. The endless meadows are wonderful, the air is the cleanest ever, the water is like nowhere else. Sauris has re-invented itself out of these unique attributes. Pork is cured here and prosciutto di Sauris is now a recognised delicacy. Beer in the characteristic white bottles requires no pasteurisation; it has a growing number of devotees. Whether the Saurians will be able to revive the local art of weaving (flax, hemp and wool), with the women preparing the thread and the men doing the weaving, remains to be seen. Presently good food is at the forefront and one would be well advised to pay a visit in the summer, especially at weekends in July and August, to sample it at the open-air market.

by Paola Pugsley, author of Blue Guide Aegean Turkey: From Troy to Bodrum.

News from Syracuse

Blue Guide Sicily author Ellen Grady has some updates from Syracuse, where, on the island of Ortygia, the old city, there’s a useful new Tourist Infopoint just behind the cathedral, at Via Minerva 4. It has up-to-date information on opening hours of the museums and the archaeological sites in Syracuse and the area of Noto. There is also a shop offering local crafts.

While visiting Syracuse, don’t miss the Paolo Orsi Archaeological Museum. On the upper floor, a look at the Greek and Roman statuary in Section D is always worth your time. In Section F, the interesting Late Antique section is now complete, with a permanent and beautifully displayed exhibition of early Christian frescoes, epigraphs, reliefs and artefacts from the local catacombs. This surprisingly extensive system of underground tunnels and caves served as a place for burials, but also for practising the forbidden cult of Christianity.

If you’re in a car, head south from Syracuse to the charming fishing village of Marzamemi (an hour’s drive) for lunch or dinner at La Cialoma. Our recommended restaurant is now listed in the Michelin Guide for Italy. You can eat either in the square, or on the terrace overlooking the sea and the old tuna fishery. The fish dishes are always good, especially if accompanied by Lina’s organic house wine, which is cloudy, white and slightly fizzy. Local strawberries are perfect when in season, or you could try sheep’s milk ricotta with a sauce of vino cotto, reduced wine. La Cialoma is open daily for lunch and dinner from April to October; in winter for lunch only, except at weekends.

Fresco of a saint from Pantalica / Fried Mediterranean cod

Italian island food

Matthew Fort: Summer in the Islands, An Italian Odyssey. Unbound Press, London, 2017.
Reviewed by Charles Freeman.

Matthew Fort, distinguished writer on food and all the conviviality that accompanies it, fell in love with Italy through its ice cream at the age of eleven. The relationship has lasted and has developed into a deep affection for Italy’s peoples and their traditions of fine local cooking. Having traversed the peninsula for Eating up Italy and explored Sicily in Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons, he embarked, at the age of 67, on a leisurely six-month tour of all the islands off the Italian coast. It did not quite work out as planned: a ruptured Achilles tendon led to his abrupt return to England, but he eventually made it back to complete his visit to every Italian island, with Sardinia and Sicily included.

Italian restaurateurs love a genial and tubby figure who turns up to ask them what they cook best and then enjoys several courses of local specialities. Mr. Fort fits the bill brilliantly. From zuppetta di lenticchie usticese con totani from the fertile soil of Ustica to grigliata mista di suino in Alghero, Sardinia, and ricotta salata al forno, ‘salted ricotta that has been baked in the oven and sliced as thin as a communion wafer’, matched with a sweet Malvasia di Lipari in Salina off the coast of Sicily, he honours the cucina of wherever he turns up. Fort travels with Nicoletta, his trusty Vespa, and the pair are happy together chugging across the varied terrains thrown up by geology and volcanic eruptions (although of course Nicoletta cannot participate in the feasting). One lady who can is Fort’s daughter Lois, who joins him in Giglio and Giannutri, off Italy’s western coast. She is “curious, humorous, calm in the face of adversity [unlike Fort], cheerful and determined to enjoy each adventure to the full”, so they have happy times together and Fort is melancholy when she leaves. She will reappear in the final chapter when, on her first visit to Venice, they enjoy a beautifully served lunch at the Locanda Cipriani on Torcello. Other companions appear: Lisa, who disrupts Fort’s lazy lifestyle on Filicudi and Alicudi with two vast aluminium suitcases and a vigorous programme of walking and swimming.

I was worried at first that one island after another would prove monotonous; but each island is different. Some are crammed with holiday-makers and others with prisons (either abandoned or still functioning), so there is plenty of contrast and enough variety to keep the narrative going. Fort also knows enough history and literature to fill us in on Napoleon on Elba, for example, or the Dukes of Bronte, heirs of Nelson, in Sicily. There is a discursion on the ‘pagan’ Norman Douglas, whose memoir Old Calabria (1915) extols the wildness of Italy’s deep south; and frustration with a German film crew who have taken over Garibaldi’s farm on Caprera, depriving Fort of the chance to eat there. He sums up his ambivalent feelings about Garibaldi nonetheless.

I am one up on Fort in that I have a chance, on the tours I lead, to follow up the best restaurants my wife and I discover on our reconnoitring trips. So south of Naples I shall be re-visiting the Tre Olivi at Paestum (this time taking 30 people to lunch there) and the following day I will reacquaint myself with Ristorante Romantica near Teggiano, a small hilltop town where medieval frescoes will be opened up for us in the churches before we leave for the vast Certosa di San Lorenzo in the afternoon. There is no better way of honouring a restaurant than to bring one’s friends along for a second bite. I am sure that Matthew Fort would approve.

Charles Freeman is Historical Consultant to the Blue Guides and contributor to many Blue Guide Italy titles. For more on Italian food, try the Blue Guide Italy Food Companion.