Yesterday we visited the market in Bourganeuf, which – thankfully – had a little more produce then the previous two markets. We had quite a large group so making decisions is always a little bit harder when there are 8 people with opinions… lol… But Jan-Willem was to be the chef of the day, so he had the final say in what we were gonna buy. The idea was to check what produce was available and with a reasonable price, buy that produce and in the afternoon come up with a menu.

Busy cutting

We have a large white board where the ideas are written down and once we all agree that is what we are going to make; we create a mise en place list and tasks are being divided among whoever wants to help in the kitchen that particular day. Not everyone is cooking every day; there are other activities being offered, so there are also people who prefer to go painting some days and work in the kitchen another day. So that means that the kitchencrew varies. Which is fine but it can be a little messy and unorganized as not everyone has cooking experience, but it makes it fun at the same time.
We ended up with a menu that went something like this:
Antipasti the french way (we had rillette, baked terrine of duck, tomatoes with mozarella and basil and grilled veggies)
Salmon tartar with lemon mayonaise and a sort of pesto (I ended up making it with salad (initially the idea was to make rocketpesto, but we forgot to buy rocket)
With a piece of Conquer eel
Roasted chicken with home made french fries, fresh green peas steamed with sjallots and saladhearts
Clafoutis with strawberries and mango

The chicken was from a local farm so a really good one and ofcourse; who does not like good fries…
The group of people that had to be fed keeps growing as a few family members also arrived, so in total we had 16 people at the table.

I was not too impressed with the fish; really too much bones and not enough flesh. So as good as the shark was the day before, as bad as the eel was… O well, it can’t all be perfect right?

Steamed green peas with sjalots and saladhearts

Tonight there is going to be an additional 6 people that come for a table d’hote (basically it’s paying customers) which makes it kind of scary, but also fun to be cooking for “real” customers…. We’ll see how that turns out!! I’ll keep you posted!

Checking to see if the fish is fresh

Fresh shark (yes, that is me and Mathijs)

I apologize for all the french people out here for not spelling the above  title correctly but it kind of sums up what we are doing here perfectly. I was planning on posting something here yesterday but…. unfortunately the internet connection was lost. The wifi was connected only the day before yesterday and we are sort of in the middle of nowhere (biggest places Gueret is 20 km from here and Limoges is I think about 80 km so not exactly close) so any regular connection is not existing. Rob had a special antenna placed so there is at least a better internet connection then via a telephone line, but it’s still a bit shaky.. But if you can read this; that means we had a connection plus it has its charms to be out in the country right?

Yesterday we had planned to go to the market in one of the little places around here but one of the markets was not there and the other was so small that we only bought some goatcheese and nothing else. So we ended up going to the Carrefour again.

We bought loads of fresh produce and then once back we had to come up with a menu to make.

Smoked shark with rocket and lemon mayonaise

The menu for yesterday was as follows:

Soup of roasted peppers with creme fraiche and basil

Smoked shark with rocket and lemon mayonaise

Beefstew with red cabbage, pear and mashed potatoes

Pannacotta with mango

Now I don’t know about you guys but I had never had shark before (called saumonette in french and apparently it is sold as sea-eel in some countries)

and I totally totally loved it.

It was first rubbed in seasalt and left to rest for about 30 minutes, cut into portions and patted dry with kitchen towel. Then it was put into the big green egg with Jack Daniels wood for smoking…

Absolutely delicious; the lemon mayonaise it simple. Fresh mayonaise, with some lemon zest and about the juice of half a lemon and you’re good to go. The french mayonaise is quite good, so you can use that as a base or simply make fresh mayonaise from scratch.

The beefstew was maybe my favorite…. We used a large piece of beef (I think it was 2 kilo in total but then we are with 12 people) and first removed the tendons where necessary. The beef (at roomtemperature) was then marinated for about 30 minutes at least in red wine. Briefly sauteed in various portions (if you put all the beef in a pan at the same time, you end up cooking it, instead of frying it. That is not what you want!) and then we put it in the oven with all the marinate. The beef was seasoned with salt and pepper during the sautee part. We added some whole cloves of garlic (including the skin), onion and a little later in the process some mushrooms and crispy bacon bits. In total it simmered in the oven for about 2 hours (in a crockpot) but just check when the beef is done, as you do not want to overcook it.
I seriously think it was the best stew I have ever had and combined with the red cabbage and mashed potatoes it was a delicious meal.

The pannacotta was just big enough. The previous day we had made two cakes (one lemon and one chocolate ) and while delicious it was a bit tooo much after a rather heavy meal! So the pannacotta was a better portion and delicious as well. As a base for the pannacotta I used this recipe and then just substitued the cranberries for the mango. The sugar got reduced to 90 gr (for 3 portions of the recipe) and I mashed some of the leftover mangoes into the cream before pouring into their forms.

Beef stew

After such a meal it was time for some of us (…) to stretch their legs in a battle of tabletennis. And did I already show you our gorgeous sleeping room, which is in an old cowstable and one of the best things is that – while it is pitch dark inside with no windows – it is fabulously cool!! Totally love that… plus… we have no mosquitos!!

Our stable room!

Views from Ahun

I told you right, that I would be very soon off to France to enjoy a week of cooking..? It’s been busy up till now and I had wanted to complete the Daring Bakers too as I totally love the recipe but with everything going on these days it’s hard to complete anything. So it does come at a fairly good time that we can relax here in France.

We’ve already done loads of cooking with Rob from Kookstudio Amsterdam and he and his wife have started a cooking/creative venture here in France too. They are situated in a very small town called Ahun, which is about 950 km drive from where Tom and I live. The area is absolutely beautiful and you wouldn’t believe how quiet it is here (ok, except for the occassional cow… They bought this place about 5 years ago when it was complete rundown and have managed to make a couple of gorgeous rooms, an outdoor kitchen and still give it the feeling of an authentic french place (with lots of brocante that is used throughout the in- and exterior.)

Painting by the river

Apart from cooking you can also learn how to sculpt with stone and get painting lessons from an authentic artist. I am really not into sculpting or painting, but if you are into it; the area is beautiful and apparently the painting lessons are real fun or so I’ve been told.

We’ve arrived here on saturday while most of the group arrived on sunday, but it gave me the time to take photos of a few of the rooms before they were occupied… We’re actually sleeping in the former cowstable.. They’ve really managed to make it look like a very cosy bedroom!

There is lots of other stuff planned for the rest of the week, so I am sure you will be hearing more of me in the days to come. Wifi was installed here today, (yes, hot of the press!)

Today is a day when there is no market in the area, so we went to the carefour for groceries and based on the ingredients we found we have come up with dinner for tonight which you will hear about tomorrow.

Outdoors kitchen area

That is the whole idea anyway during the entire week; to try and create a meal based on the ingredients we will find at the local markets. I think probably we will take turns in being the one deciding on the menu and if all goes well, we will actually also be getting a live rooster and duck to…. eh… prepare… if you know what I mean. I am not sure yet, if I will be able to go through the motions with that although I have done it before, but well, it’s different with live animals! All in all, it’s gonna be a fun week and I will be posting more. For now it’s time to go back and check on dinner for tonight. It’s sort of unnerving if you have to suddenly cook from scratch for 12 people! (ok, with loads of help, but still….)

O and that gorgeous red cat is Fritz….. Isn’t he cute??

Almond nut butter

I am nuts about nuts… Love them all, although I have a slight allergy for them. Ever heard of the most common allergy which is apple, raisins and walnuts? Well, I have it.. Really nothing serious; but whenever I eat a raw apple or walnut (once used in something I’m fine) my throat, ears and chin start to itch and if I make the mistake of touching my eyes before I wash my hands…. the fluids in my eyes start to swell up making me look like something from outer space.. I’ve only had that once but it was not a pretty sight! Ever since I make double sure to wash my hands immediately after eating an apple. Yes, I still eat them. I like them too much and the itching is something that passes quickly.

Lately though I have noticed that the allergy seems to have spread to other nuts besides walnuts… Hmm…. I’ve always thought I wasn’t “made” properly.. too many weird allergies, but thankfully nothing all too serious. So… I was quite happy to read about the challenge for the Daring Cooks for this month.

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

Almonds

When I was reading through our various options for the recipes I really wanted to make the Asian salad as that just sounded perfectly for the current hot weather, but… Tom didn’t feel like eating any salad. For some weird reason he always feels that dinner should be positively warm. Even if the weather is +30°C, he still insists something should be served hot. He’s ok if it is only a sandwich, as long as it is one prepared in the oven and eaten hot… How weird is that??

So I do tend to eat my salads for lunch rather then dinner, although I do occasionally just ignore him and prepare a salad for dinner. I mean seriously; what is wrong with a salad??

But for this particular challenge I really liked all four of the options so I decided to please my guy and made the chicken with curried tomato almond sauce.

Making the butter is really a breeze. Just pop everything in the magimix and keep on grinding until it becomes smooth and buttery. I did add a bit more oil as almonds are by their nature rather dry. I did not roast them beforehand but I can imagine that it would be an enhancement to the flavor. The nuts were unsalted to begin with, so I just added salt to the final dish prior to eating it. Which worked fine for me as I felt it would be easier to adjust the levels of saltiness when doing it this way. The finished dish was also very flavorful.

I do tend to forgot to read recipes very thoroughly, so what happens is that I scan through it, check my ingredients and then just start cooking. I sure do check the recipe occasionally but as it turns out; I also forgot to do certain things that are spelled out. Simply because I do not read it thoroughly enough.

In this case I sort of forgot to make it a smooth sauce, as I just chopped the onion into fine bits and left them in the sauce. There was no way I would have been able to remove them anyway and I liked the final result. Not a smooth sauce by any means, but very tasty nonetheless. The almonds you could taste very well in the dish but not in an overpowering way. Really loved the dish!

Chicken tomato almond curry

Chicken with Curried Tomato Almond Sauce
Yield: 4 servings

Recipe notes: Substitute the protein of your choice for the chicken. This is a smooth sauce, so the onion is removed before serving. If you prefer, dice the onion and leave it in the sauce or substitute a bit of onion powder.

Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon (15 ml) olive oil
4 (6 oz / 170 g) boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
Salt to taste

Spice Blend:
1.5 tablespoons (20 ml) garam masala seasoning
1 teaspoon (5 ml) ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon (2 ml) ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon (1 ml) black pepper

Sauce:
4 tablespoons (60 ml) butter
1 large onion, cut in half pole to pole
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 (15-ounce/425 g) can tomato sauce
⅓ cup (80 ml) almond butter
⅓ cup (80 ml) milk
½ to ¾ cup (120 to 180 ml) chicken broth or water, more as needed
1 cup (240 ml) frozen peas (optional)

Hot basmati rice for serving
Chopped parsley (optional garnish)
Sliced almonds (optional garnish)

Directions:

1. Cook the chicken. If desired, pound chicken to ¼ inch (6 mm) thickness to promote even cooking. Sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper to taste. Heat 1 teaspoon (5 ml) olive oil a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add half the chicken; sauté 3 to 5 minutes on each side or until cooked through. Cook the chicken in 2 batches, adding more oil if needed for second batch. Dice chicken into bite-sized pieces; set aside on clean plate and keep warm.
2. Prepare spice blend. Stir garam masala, ginger, cinnamon, and pepper together in a small bowl. Set aside.
3. Melt the butter in large nonstick skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook gently for several minutes to infuse the butter with onion flavor. Keep the heat low to avoid burning the butter; a little color is fine. Add the spice blend and garlic and cook for 1 minute or till fragrant, stirring constantly. Add the tomato sauce, stir well, and bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer. Whisk in almond butter and milk until thoroughly combined with tomato sauce. The almond butter is thick so it takes a while to make a smooth sauce. Return to simmer. Add broth (or water) to sauce to reach desired consistency; return to simmer. Add more broth (or water) as needed to thin sauce as desired.
4. Remove onion from sauce and discard. Stir frozen peas (if using) into sauce. Transfer sliced chicken to sauce. Simmer gently for a few minutes until peas and chicken are heated through.
5. Serve chicken and sauce over rice. Garnish with chopped parsley and/or sliced almonds if desired.

Fettucine with lots of veggies

It doesn’t really happen very often that I use a recipe to make pasta. To me it is just the perfect meal when we need something quick, tasty and want to use whatever we have in the fridge or closet. So that is also the way that this fettucini came to live…. It’s hot here at the moment, which I am sure you heard me say on more then one occassion by now. So while perfect for strawberry frozen yogurt or mango icecream; that is not really very sustainable or fit for an evening meal. It’s also not the kind of weather where you would like to stand in the kitchen or near a stove or oven for longer then absolutely necessary. Since I used fresh pasta for this recipe, cooking the pasta is just about 3 minutes and the rest is as easy as can be. Because I used smoked chicken, rather then raw chicken; it’s even quicker to make. I will try and list the ingredients that I used for this pasta but really… it would work with lots of other things as well!

FETTUCINI WITH PEAS, SMOKED CHICKEN AND SUN DRIED TOMATOES (serves 2)

Fresh pasta for two

2-3 sundried tomatoes

3-4 fresh tomatoes, cut into large chunks

1 onion, cut into chunks

1 clove of garlic

roasted bell peppers (about 2)

200 gr peas, frozen (obviously if you have fresh peas, you can use those as well)

handful of rocket

200 gr smoked chicken

garlic pepper, seasalt

Italian herbs (basil mainly)

Parmesan for grating

100 ml of double cream (I think I might have used a little less. It was really just a dash)

Bring your water to a boil and keep at a simmer. You want to have your ingredients done already before cooking the pasta, as that literally takes 3 minutes when using fresh pasta. If using dried pasta with longer cooking times then you might want to cook it straight away, as the preparing of the sauce is very quick.

Cut sundried tomatoes and roasted bell peppers in small strips. Cut the chicken in cubes.

Put a pan on the stove at medium heat and add some oliveoil. Slowly fry the onion until soft, add the garlic and bake for a short while. Ad the chicken and briefly fry before adding the sundried tomatoes and bell peppers. Add the fresh tomatoes and let it simmer shortly until the tomatoes start to fall apart and form a sauce. Once you have that, add the cream and mix. Taste and add Italian herbs, salt and pepper where needed. I’ve used garlic pepper which is great and very tasty. Add the frozen peas at the last minute and warm through.

To serve put the fettucini in a bowl, add a little grated parmesan on top and a handful of rocket.

Enjoy!

The heat has struck again here and guess what I decided to do this afternoon? Remove all the weed from the garden! Really a fabulous idea when the temperatures are soaring way above 30 (can’t really tell exact numbers… I don’t have a termometer in the garden) but at least it’s starting to look like a garden again. It’s weird really, that no matter how dry it is, weed always seems to survive, while the regular plants, the ones you really want to survive struggle! When we came back from Italy our private jungle was a little too realistic… It’s cut down a bit and hopefully it stays down as we’re having a gardenparty next week and I would hate to start all over again. O well, I am really not complaining (oo, did you think that was what I was doing??) as it is finally summer!!

Mango icecream in cookie cup

So obviously after the delicious Strawberry icecream I had to make another flavor and this time I wanted to make a cream-based icecream instead of yogurt based. We have friends coming over tonight and upon asking my friend what flavor of icecream she would like, she instantly called out ‘ mango!! ‘ Now you have to know that we do have mango’s here but in general the ones you can find in the supermarket are really terrible mango’s. Unripe when you buy them and tasteless once they are ripe. Not sure where they get them from but it sure ain’t a good source. But I was lucky this time as I found some really good  looking very ripe mango’s that I had to transport very very carefully as they do bruise easily in this state. I bought four of them and needed only two for the icecream, so guess where the other two went… They were gone before you know it. Now eating a mango is not something you want to do in public, at least I don’t want to do it in public, as it gets incredibly messy. I have not mastered the art of eating a mango and keeping my clothes clean at the same time. Any tips or hints are welcome here (and I have tried most of them so you have to be original!)

Making the icecream was ridiculously easy. I’ll give you the recipe below but you can almost not call it a recipe as it is so simple to make. I do think I am ready for more difficult types of icecream now, as I have not made any containing eggyolks, which is apparently quite normal. I need to make icecream based on creme anglaise, sorbeticecream, semifreddo (but I understand you do not necessarily need an icecreammaker for that) and ooo, the flavor options are just endless!

I gotta think a while what I will be making next, so stay tuned and in the meantime enjoy this lovely icecream! I would like this particular recipe with a little more tang to it. I would have added more lemonjuice but the friend that is coming tonight dislikes lemon so I left it out, but had it been for me I would have added maybe a little zest and some extra lemonjuice. I think that would work really well with this mango taste.

MANGO ICECREAM

500 gr mango, cut into chunks

100 gr sugar

300 ml of double cream or whipping cream (I used whipping cream)

tbsp on lemon juice

splash of wodka

Put the mango chunks in a blender and blend until smooth. If you don’t own a blender I am sure this will work equally well in a magimix or similar machine or handblender.

Once pureed, add the sugar and cream and mix the lot together until smooth. I did this by hand as I was a little afraid that the blender would start whipping the cream into another consistency, but maybe that doesn’t happen. I don’t know.

Add the lemon juice and wodka and cool in the fridge for at least an hour.

Once cool; put in your icecreammaker according to the instructions of the manufacturer. Mine took about 25 minutes to finish.

Check out more mango recipes via the below link to Foodista!

Mango

Strawberry yogurt icecream

Some of you might actually remember that I got an icecream machine for my birthday in february…. And finally, finally I have made my first icecream!! Why so long you wonder? Well, the thing was that our regular freezer has drawers and the icecream bucket or however you call it needs to sit in the freezer for 10 hours prior to use. So I could not put it in the freezer… But this weekend we finally bought a little extra freezer. One of the kinds that loads from above so plenty of space to put thing upright plus we now have extra freezer space. It was a constant battle between Tom wanting to put in fishfood (….) and me wanting to put in normal food. He sort of confiscated the bottom drawer, but that is a lot of space in a small freezer! But finally…. the problem is solved and I can make icecream!!!! I have to confess that I wasn’t really aware when I got it that you have selffreezing machines and non-self freezing machines but this one works absolutely fine. And now that we have the space to keep it in the freezer permanently; no issue whatsoever (until we run out of freezer space again that is..). It’s a Magimix something; if you want to know the exact type I will look it up.

Strawberry icecream

I chose a simple recipe to start with as I have never made icecream before and well, I figured it made sense to get familiair with the process first before diving in head first (which – admittedly – is what I normally do..lol) I got the recipe from David Lebovitz blog, which is a great source of information for making icecream. And I am definitely going to order his book  as that has tons more recipes in there and I’ve already heard many good things about it.

I picked a yogurt based recipe as I figured that would be a little lighter then cream based and it was..

It was a breeze to make and when tasting the final result I already new it would be delicious. And it was. After about 25 minutes in the icemachine (I forgot to time it, so I just checked if it was ok after having chatted to the neighbour for an x-amount of time, so I am not sure if it really was 25 minutes but it’s something like that) I took it out and both Tom and I had a little bowl of the icecream. The rest I put in the freezer to photograph today.

I loved, loved, loved the taste of this icecream; it was not so heavy due to the yogurt but the overall smell and taste of the strawberries was fabulous. I now seriously wonder what on earth they put in commercial icecream as I bet it is certainly not the amount of strawberries that I used. You can find the recipe for this icecream on David’s site, so I am going to point you there to check it out.

I have a friend coming over on thursday and I already promised to make her icecream as well. She loves cream so that will be a creamy version, just have to figure out which flavor I will be adding and how I can make it extra creamy. We have a very famous baker in Amsterdam who makes icecream that is partially whipped cream. I mean; when you eat it, sometimes you only have a bite of whipped cream instead of icecream so it is very very creamy. Too much so for me, as it is literally an entire meal but I would like to recreate a similar effect but maybe with less cream. So if anyone has any suggestions please let me know!

Endive salad with nectarines and haloumi

I am not sure how the temperatures are in the rest of Europe but here in Holland it has reached rather high numbers. Yesterday was the worst with 37°C  (98°F) and while today is a little less hot; it’s still in it’s thirties… Not even Italy was that hot! And the problem here is that it tends to get really humid and sticky. Dry heat is easier to cope with I think..

Since I got back it’s been really crazy with work, so this is the first day I get to actually do nothing and cook something! Or maybe cooking is not the right term when it comes to a salad, but it’s definitely the perfect thing to eat on a hot weekend summer day. Tonight it’s gonna be BBQ time and I seriously hope that the weather gets a little cooler. But then again; at least the sun is shining right? So no more complaining!

I didn’t even tell you yet that I have won an award for my wedding photography! It’s the Weddingphoto Award 2010 which is held every year. There were 5 categories and I won in the free category with the below photo. As it turns out I am also the only female photographer that won… Not that that makes any difference; I just thought it was funny. And no dad, I did not win 10.000 euro (sort of the first thing he asked when I told them I had won!) but it’s good publicity and ultimately that is what counts right?

The winning photo

It was also the first time I have ever entered in any contest since I’ve become a photographer and maybe I should do it more often as it’s definitely good exposure. I am just always one of those people that only notice a contest after it’s already closed..lol… Guess it won’t hurt to keep up more with what is going on!

I’ve got some interesting projects going on that hopefully will be successful….

But on to my salad of this afternoon….

I had bought the endive yesterday and with the temperatures right now it was already wilted before I got home. But 15 minutes in an icewater bath did miracles and revived the vegetables completely. The original recipe comes from Delicious magazine and was with goatcheese. I didn’t have goatcheese at hand, but I did have some haloumi left in the fridge that I wanted to use and thought would work perfect with the nectarines and the endive. And it did… Lovely combination! The dressing was made of some sjalot, garlic, white balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Add salt if you want but really the salt in the haloumi is enough for the entire salad.

Here is the adapted recipe! (original Delicious Magazine July 2010)

ENDIVE SALAD WITH NECTARINE, SEEDS AND HALOUMI (starter or lunchdish for 4p)

Small bunch of endive

1 clove of garlic

2 sjalots

100 ml extra virgin olive oil

4 tbsp of white balsamic vinegar (you can use white wine vinegar or apple vinegar)

2 ripe nectarines, washed

75 gr pumkin or other seeds

couple of tbsp of oil (for frying the haloumi)

150 gr haloumi, cut into cubes

Cut the endive into small strips of about 2 cm en leave them in icewater for about 15 minutes. Dry with a saladspinner.

In the meantime fry the garlic and onion in oil until they are supersoft. Put them into a bowl and add the balsamic.

Cut the nectarines (leave the peel on) around the pit into small parts. Roast the pumkin seeds in a tbsp of oil and fry the cubes of haloumi. Ones golden brown take them out of the pan and put on kitchenpaper to remove most of the fat.

Mix the endive in a salad bowl with the dressing and add pepper and salt if you want to.

Divide across plate and put the nectarine and haloumi on top and sprinkle with the seeds to finish.

Spaghetti vongole

What better way to finish our last few days in Italy then by the seaside? Sandra and I specifically booked a room with seaview and wow, what a view we have!! I will post a shot of our hotel balcony at the bottom, so you can be envious… We chose Rapallo because of it’s location and convenience when travelling back. Because Levanto is quite close from here and because we thought that was a disappointing coastal town our expectations where not too high about Rapallo, but we were pleasantly surprised. Sure, it’s a little rundown, but our hotel is lovely, the food is fabulous and there is a beach, sunshine and nice people. I mean truly; is there anything else you need for a final few days of relaxation?

So the last few days are not gonna be very eventful and we have not planned much more then a little sightseeing, but basically our last days will be filled with beach, relaxing, reading and good food… So with that I will finish our trip in Italy with just a few more photos to keep you entertained and tomorrow we will already be in France; on our way back home!! (which is also always nice… and I would love to see Gizmo again!)\

Good food!

View from our balcony by day

View from our balcony at night

Views of Siena (and yes, that is pecorino again...)

Ah…. Siena…. What can I say about Siena that possibly describes this beautiful city? Maybe because we were slightly disappointed about Florence or maybe because it’s just what it is; but Siena was a pleasant surprise.
The city is just gorgeous but while still being touristic is has retained it’s original atmosphere. The centre is filled with medieval buildings and obviously the most famous square in Italy is the Piazza il Campo where each year the Palio is held. Seeing the square you do wonder how they manage to get all those horses racing in there, but when you look at the photos it is really not all that big.
We were told by one of the waiters of one of the many cafes around the square that apparently if you get a ticket to watch the palio you cannot leave the square for the next 6 hours and there is no shade whatsoever!! We were there for about 30 minutes in the sunshine and because it gently slopes downwards, there is almost no wind but loads of sunshine…. I think I would probably still grab the opportunity if it would ever happen but it’s not a good prospect to be standing in the scorching heat for 6 hours!!
We managed to find a great place for lunch at a small Osteria called Il Ghibellino, which was packed with Italian families when we arrived but we gladly waited for a table as the food that they were being served looked really good.

Torta di parmiggiano with zucchini flowers

As a starter I had a delicious little pie made of Parmiggiano Reggiano and zucchini flowers, main was a pasta with ricotta and pomodori and no dessert (too many dessert where had already, so better skip one every once in a while…)

We walked around some more and had ice cream at Nanini I believe it is called which is supposed to be famous for it’s great ice cream. And it was good, but not as good as the icecream we had in San Gimignano at DiPiazza. If you’re ever there, go and look up that little shop. It will be worth it, I guarantee you!

Siena has many steep hills so after walking around for hours we starting to feel our feet and instead of staying for dinner we decided to spend our last day in Florence in Radda in Chianti where we had a lovely dinner before in the tiny bodega there. It’s small but perfect for a small meal and since we had a big lunch we figured a smaller dinner would be in order to be able to still fit into our pants the next day..

The trip from Siena there is not too long as most of the distances within the Chianti region are fairly short, although most have many many winding roads (unless you take the highway that is)

We chose for dinner just a plate of various pecorino cheeses for the girls and various salumi’s for the boys. Ofcourse mixed with a Chianti Classico, that was a perfect meal for another perfect day in paradise… (well, ok that is maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point!)

The next day we would be leaving for the lovely little town of Gorzano di Maranello where we would stay at Ca’ Penelope and have that wonderful cooking lesson from Lorna but you already know all about that. By the way Gorzano itself is really not much, but the b&b is wonderful, so I should point that out before mass tourism will go in the direction of Gorzano to be entirely disappointed..lol…