San­ta Croce With­out a Baedeker

And so Day Three of our Flo­ren­tine adven­tures dawned, pour­ing with rain.  We decid­ed to cross the street and vis­it the Pit­ti Palace, and dear read­ers, giv­en the choice, I would def­i­nite­ly wait for a sun­ny day, skip the seem­ing­ly end­less room after room of paint­ing after paint­ing and go instead to the Boboli Gar­dens, adja­cent to the Palace.  The only tru­ly mem­o­rable thing about the Pit­ti Col­lec­tion, for us that day, was the dis­cov­ery of what I now think of as “The Num­ber One Way I Don’t Want To Be Mar­tyred.”  Poor Saint Agatha.

But at least we did get the view, above, of the clear­ing sky around lunchtime, and we left our cul­tur­al advance­ment behind in order to feast on our mar­ket tak­ings, back at home.

I have been try­ing to find, in my lit­tle Ital­ian dic­tio­nary, what the word was that the bak­er was using when I bought this bread.  It sound­ed like “sketchy,” but I can­not find it, real­ly.  It was like a very crusty, salty focac­cio.  Since we had lost the bat­tle of No White Food already with the flour in the spinach dumplings TWO nights in a row, it seemed the bet­ter part of val­or to eat this love­ly bread, with our cheese and salami.

And then the skies cleared, and since the apart­ment was to open as the Bar­ret-Brown­ing Muse­um that after­noon, we decid­ed to get our­selves to San­ta Croce, a la “A Room With A View,” one of my favorite all-time books and films.  And it was just lovely.

Dear Michelan­gelo’s tomb!  Designed by Vasari, which I had for­got­ten.  I real­ly must encour­age Avery to read his Lives of the Artists, one of the best, most gos­sipy takes on Flo­rence in the Renais­sance that you could wish for.  He knew every­one, and believe me, what hap­pened in Flo­rence did NOT stay in Flo­rence.  He told all.

We wan­dered around in the patchy sun­light, look­ing at all the plaques and tombs to var­i­ous peo­ple of note: Mar­coni, who invent­ed the radio, and Machi­avel­li, there are a cou­ple of strange bed­fel­lows!  And Loren­zo Ghib­er­ti, he of the gold­en doors on the Bap­tis­tery, and Dante!  Sad­ly the Giot­to fres­coes were in restau­ro, which is one of the haz­ards of vis­it­ing Flo­rence.  When I lived there for a sum­mer, 25 years ago, it seemed we were con­stant­ly walk­ing all the way across the city to see some chapel or oth­er, only to find it chiu­so when we got there.  Avery point­ed out that, “Fair enough, it’s been 25 years, they prob­a­bly NEED restor­ing.”  I could use a lit­tle touch­ing up myself.

From San­ta Croce, we escaped into bright sun­shine and mutu­al­ly decid­ed that for the moment, we were both art-ed out and church-ed out.  Avery was aim­ing for some gela­to, and I had some seri­ous food shop­ping to do.

This shop, in a tiny, wind­ing side street, the Via Dei Neri off the piaz­za San­ta Croce, had every­thing!  Balls of home­made moz­zarel­la di bufala, creamy and almost falling apart, olives of every descrip­tion, the most expen­sive tuna in olive oil I have ever come across — 12 euros for a jar! — and an enor­mous, tow­er­ing rack of spices in glass tubes corked like wine bot­tles.  And a gor­geous pro­sciut­to, not too salty.  And jars of fagi­oli, the white beans so much more deli­cious, sim­ply sauteed with olive oil and gar­lic, than any bean liv­ing in Eng­land.  Why?  Because every­thing in Italy tastes bet­ter than any­thing any­where else.  It’s in the air.

We came home laden with parcels — fresh arti­chokes and firm heads of finoc­chio, fen­nel, with which I pro­posed to make a sal­ad.  And when I cut into the first arti­choke, look what I found… or rather, “who.”

What a lucky fel­low, that I did­n’t cut him in half!  I shrieked!  Every­one came run­ning.  “You must put him out­side some­where, Mum­my!” Avery wailed, so I went to show him to Ele­na, the love­ly house­keep­er who was act­ing as docent in the muse­um that after­noon.  “Where shall I put him?”  “There is a pot­ted lemon tree out­side your bath­room.  He can go there.  And don’t wor­ry: you can still eat the arti­choke!” she assured me, 100% Ital­ian.  Well trimmed and washed, it made a love­ly sal­ad, and the cater­pil­lar earned his sies­ta in the lemon tree.

Mean­while, the wild boar stew bub­bled away.  Fol­low­ing the restau­ra­teur’s instruc­tions of the night before, the chunks of gor­geous­ly mar­bled meat had reposed, overnight, in a bath of red wine.  Now, it filled the apart­ment with its gar­licky aroma.

Stufa­to di Cinghiale

(serve 4)

1 kilo/2 lbs wild boar meat, cut into man­age­able chunks

1 bot­tle ade­quate red wine

left­over tops and leaves of 2 bulbs fennel

1 white onion, quartered

6 cloves gar­lic, crushed slightly

olive oil to cov­er bot­tom of cook­ing dish

1 lb chest­nut or white mush­rooms, quartered

2 cups beef or chick­en stock

1/2 cup pan­na al tartu­fo, truf­fled cream, if you’re in Flo­rence: ordi­nary cream if not

dash truf­fle oil

Wash the meat and dry it with paper tow­els.  Place in a heavy-bot­tomed dish large enough to con­tain all the ingre­di­ents.  Pour over the wine, then throw in the fen­nel tops, onions and gar­lic.  Leave in fridge overnight, covered.

Six hours before you are ready to eat, drain away all but about 1/2 cup of the wine, leav­ing the veg­eta­bles in the dish with the meat, then add the mush­rooms and the stock, to cov­er the meat.

Cook at a very low tem­per­a­ture, per­haps 200F/100C, so that the meat bub­bles slight­ly, either on the stove­top or in the oven, for six hours.  Check to make sure the stew is bub­bling con­stant­ly, and stir occasionally.

When the meat is thor­ough­ly cooked and ten­der, add the truf­fle or reg­u­lar cream and the driz­zle of truf­fle oil.  Serve with noo­dles or bread.

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While this stew was very good, I do not think it bub­bled quite con­sis­tent­ly enough in the oven while we were away, because I was so intent on hav­ing the oven low.  As a result, the meat was a bit tougher than I would like, not the melt­ing qual­i­ty of my shoul­der of beef cooked much the same way.  It’s also pos­si­ble that wild boar is sim­ply tougher.  I have one rather famous cook­ing friend who says he’s nev­er cooked it to his com­plete sat­is­fac­tion.  But he keeps try­ing, because the fla­vor is so love­ly.  Not a big gamey, but a big, meaty fla­vor that went per­fect­ly with the mush­rooms and cream

And to start, we had a tru­ly Ital­ian appe­tiz­er: moz­zarel­la di bufala with shaved truf­fles, and a driz­zle of truf­fle oil.  So sim­ple, so perfect.

Sighs of delight all around, in the tall-ceilinged din­ing room, where we felt like vis­it­ing roy­al­ty.  Out for gela­to in the Piaz­za de la Sig­no­ra, with all the oth­er tourists, which can be fun if you just for­get how much you’d like to fit in, and live there… and home to fall exhaust­ed to sleep, with the motor­bikes screech­ing out­side the win­dows, the sounds of far-off music, voic­es shout­ing in Ital­ian too fast to be under­stood.  Heav­en, in short.