corbezzoli!

Blimey!

We're on the road again. Katg, the faithful peugeot 106 has been converted into the worlds smallest camper van, with a matress, camping stove, the lot. just about to leave and cross the snowy Appenines to catch the overnight ferry to Olbia, Sardegna in search of Corbezzolo and its stories.

Corbezzolo honey, from Arbutus, or the strawberry tree is amazing, bitter sweet. It is produced and prized on the island.... I know litttle more, watch this space!!

for the time being, here is a story written by Nancy Harmon Jenkins about Corbezzolo from http://foodandwine.compuserve.com/articles/undiscovered-italy&printer=1

A writer goes in search of bitter honey and other specialties of Sardinia, an island so isolated it calls the rest of Italy "The Continent."

By Nancy Harmon Jenkins

Last summer, I went off to sardinia to look for bitter honey, miele amaro in Italian. Ordinarily I'm not a fan of honey, which seems more interesting to contemplate (the bees, the flowers, the ancient food of gods and goddesses) than actually to eat. But this honey, with its bitter aftertaste, was something else. A Sardinian friend introduced me to miele amaro when he offered a small jar as a house present. "Bitter?" I asked. "It's made from corbezzolo," he said, as if that explained everything.

It wasn't easy to find bitter honey in Sardinia, which lies in the deep green sea off Italy's west coast, but I ultimately succeeded. And while crisscrossing Sardinia on my quest (finding along the way other foods the island is famous for, such as the crisp flatbread called pane carasau and fregola, a cross between couscous and pasta), I also discovered that bitterness is a quality appreciated by the local palate.

Giuliano Pau, marketing director of Sardinia's renowned Argiolas winery, who picked me up at the airport in Cagliari, the capital, confirmed this. "We Sardinians are a people of excess," he proclaimed, with visible pride. "Excessive bitterness, excessive sweetness." A thread of bitterness runs through Sardinian food and wine, he said, and it adds an unexpected edge to the simplest flavors. Take, for example, the dessert wine called Angialas, which I sampled at Argiolas, just north of Cagliari. Made of Malvasia and Nasco grapes, Angialas is indeed sweet, but with a distinctive bitter-orange perfume that cuts the floral bouquet.

"Più pastori che pescatori," Sardinians say, "more shepherds here than fishermen," though the island is surrounded by pristine water and the cuisine includes some of the finest, freshest seafood I've ever tasted. Case in point: the Ristorante dal Corsaro in the center of bustling Cagliari on the southern coast. In this tranquil retreat, Pina Deidda, the padrona di casa (the owner), served up dish after dish of exquisitely prepared seafood, including small rings of sweet calamari, poached and mixed with young green beans and fresh basil; homemade malloreddus, ridged Sardinian pasta, with a delicate fish and tomato sauce; and oven-roasted sea bass, guaranteed wild because only the wild ones meet the padrona's exacting standards.

Over lunch, Pau asked me what I wanted from Sardinia. I didn't hesitate to query him about the ewe's milk Pecorino cheeses, pastas like malloreddus and fregola, and succulent porceddu, baby pigs roasted with myrtle leaves for island festivities. And then I mentioned bitter honey.

"Miele di corbezzolo," Pau said. "Very difficult to find." It was the first of many molto difficiles and impossibiles that would follow me to the end of my stay. But what, I asked, is corbezzolo? Pau explained: A humble bush, corbezzolo has its only moment of glory in early winter, when the branches are covered with small dark red fruits that look so much like strawberries the bush is often called the strawberry tree in English.

"Ernesto will help you find your honey," Pau said, as he sent me off to the tiny fishing village of Portoscuso, a pretty cluster of sun-baked houses on the southwestern tip of the island. There I was taken in hand by Ernesto Vacca, co-owner of La Ghinghetta, an elegant seven-room hotel and restaurant overlooking a handkerchief of beach and a broad channel, beyond which lies the island of San Pietro. Vacca promised his help, but first, he said, I must taste La Ghinghetta's sumptuous version of cassola, a fishermen's seafood with at least seven varieties of fish and shellfish, including Mediterranean spiny lobster, crabs, mussels and calamari. Then he sent me to the source of the soup, with the local fisherman Fabrizio Cherchi, robust and amiable in his yellow foul-weather gear, who took me out on the channel in his open boat while he checked his nets early the next morning.

Cherchi knew nothing of bitter honey, but Vacca had promised to help: "Secondo will know," he said, as later that day he waved me onto the ferry to Carloforte, a town of pastel-colored houses on San Pietro, a half-hour ride across the channel. Black-bearded Secondo Borghero, the chef and owner of Al Tonno di Corsa, was waiting for me at the dock on the other side. "I'm making tuna for lunch because it's fresh from the tonnara," he said, pointing to a line of white buoys marking distant nets stretched across a blue cove. There, fishermen from San Pietro still follow a ritual that goes back hundreds of years, driving migrating tuna into a series of nets for their capture.

"But first," Borghero said, "you'll have cascà--you know cascà?" I had heard of it, the word used in the Carlofortian dialect for Tunisian couscous. Borghero's cascà was fresh and fluffy and served, as in Tunisia, with chickpeas and seasonal vegetables such as peas, carrots, spring cabbage, artichokes and zucchini. Next he presented the just-caught tuna with a jammy tomato and black-olive sauce, the sweetness given an unexpected complexity by vinegar and red wine reduced to their bitter essences--that Sardinian bitterness again. At the end of the meal came a plate with slices of young Pecorino cheeses, with bitter honey dribbled thickly across them. "You can't get it around here," Borghero interjected. "It's very difficult. You have to go up to the Barbagia, the mountains around Nuoro. That's where miele amaro comes from."

The Romans called the central mountains of Sardinia the Barbagia because of the "barbarians" who inhabited the region. A few decades ago, bandits still held sway, and travelers were advised to stick to main roads and not go walking outside town, especially at night. Now a network of splendid hiking trails winds through deep green forests on the lower slopes, carrying intrepid climbers up to the rocky escarpments towering overhead. Centered around the northeastern town of Nuoro, this area is the old pastoral Sardinia of shepherds and their flocks and of magnificent ewe's milk cheeses, from fresh formaggio acido (sour cheese) to ricotta and Pecorino. The mountain dwellers are more reserved than the easygoing coastal lowlanders; they hold back, waiting to see what the stranger wants. What this stranger wanted, of course, was miele amaro.

I found it in the little town of Oliena, where Borghero sent me to an enchanting resort hotel, Su Gologone, whose charms include a swimming pool, a spa and a view of the 4,000-foot red-rock heights of Monte Corrasi.

"Miele amaro?" repeated the concierge. "Of course! We serve it every evening with sebadas. You know sebadas? Fried ravioli filled with fresh cheese. Our miele amaro comes from Tonino Piga. I will send you to him. But first..."

I was beginning to learn that there are many "but firsts" in Sardinia. Every quest leads to interesting digressions that present themselves along the way, making it impossible to follow a straight path. This time the detour took me to a dark, smoke-filled room behind the Esso station in Oliena, where the three Bette sisters bake the traditional pane carasau. Made of durum-wheat semolina, pane carasau are big, flat disks of dough that puff in the oven. Once baked, the disks quickly collapse, after which the top and bottom halves are separated and returned to the oven to toast further. The result is a crisp, long-lasting bread that shepherds take up into the mountains for the summer pasture when they're far from civilization. Pane carasau used to be made in every farmhouse kitchen, and they were unleavened, truly flatbreads. Today most of them are industrially produced using yeast. Only a few women, most of them, like the Bette sisters, well on the mature side of 50, still make the bread daily in a wood-fired oven, the way their mothers and grandmothers did before them.

Carrying a stack of fresh pane carasau, I walked over to the beekeeper's house just as his rattling Fiat pulled into the courtyard. I had expected a gnarled old man, but long, lean Tonino Piga had a more-pepper-than-salt beard. En route to the hut where he keeps his hives, Piga explained why miele amaro is so hard to find: "It's only made in November and December, when the corbezzolo flowers. It's hard to make because of the weather at that time of year. In 1998, we had early snows in the mountains, so the trees didn't flower and it was too cold for the bees to go out. That's why miele amaro is so expensive. Plus the fact that it takes so many bee trips to make it."

Bee trips? "That's the number of times a bee goes out to the flower and comes back to the hive. It takes 3,000 bee trips to make a kilo of ordinary honey and 7,000 to 8,000 bee trips to make a kilo of amaro."

Piga makes many honeys, and we tasted them all: a lightly floral millefiori from high up on rock ridges, pungent rosemary and eucalyptus honeys made when the summer sun is high. But the miele amaro won my heart.

I wrapped my precious jar in several layers of newspaper and then in a plastic bag to bring it home. It's not to everyone's taste, for sure. But every time I spoon out a little miele di corbezzolo, I'm not just trying something exotic. That spoonful captures an entire culture, one finely balanced between the bitter and the sweet, and the slightly bitter aroma of the island rises in my memory.

This article originally appeared in May, 2000.

First, catch your goose...

"Organisations such as Wheatley’s Goose Club were set up to help the poorer members of society to pay for food and drink. The tradition of eating goose on Christmas Day stretches back to the middle ages, when, along with the swan, it was the the customary festive dinner for the rich. Elizabeth I even ordered everyone to eat goose as a tribute to the sailors who had fought off the Spanish Armada - goose being the first dish she had eaten after she heard of the victory. By the 1800s goose was a relatively inexpensive choice; turkey was then considered a delicacy." http://www.bl.uk

Mmmm, a victorian community supported agriculture initiative.

This passage is from an 1851/3 account of Christmas traditions in London by Charles Manby Smith.

"Every third-rate inn and back-street public-house is the centre and focus of a goose-club, the announcement of which stares you in the face twenty times in the course of a day's walk. They owe their existence to the improvidence and want of economy of the labouring and lowest classes. A small weekly sum subscribed for thirteen weeks, entitles each subscriber to a goose; and by increasing his weekly dole, he may insure, besides the goose, a couple of bottles of spirits. The distribution of geese and gin takes place on Christmas-eve; and in large working establishments, where the goose-club is a favourite institution, and where, for the most part, the innkeeper is not allowed to meddle, the choice of the birds is decided by the throw of the dice, the thrower of the highest cast having the first choice."

Some other links about poultry and its traditions at christmas:

*Some interesting notes on the history of goose and turkey at Christmas.

*Carlo Petrini on Thanksgiving turkey in his weekly article on www.slowfood.com

So, back in the abbatoir, i am faced with tradition and history as i embark nervously on a new experience. "just grab it by the neck and hold it under your arm" , the flock of geese, with their intelligent social chatter have got my number immediately. Catching a goose is easier said than done, they run away, spread their wings and flap powerfully. Some of the more vociferous turn on me hissing and spitting. i run away which is equalising and humbling for a plastic pre-pack carnivor.

Last Christmas I gave you my gizzard....

Deep end. It's 5 days before Christmas, 6.30 in the morning, still dark, 80 turkeys to be eviscerated and dressed for collection by 10 O'clock.

Just one of a hundred orders that this organic poultry farm and slaughter house is dealing with this week.  There is little time for niceties as Mum, Valentina and I turn up for our first day of work.  Our brief introduction to the layout is to give the room its first steam clean of the day. Within minutes we are having a crash course in butchery. 

These birds have been hanging in storage for 10 days or more in the cold room. They have been plucked but not eviscerated (had their insides cleaned out). Birds will hang for up to a month like this without deterioration-their flavours will improve.  Once prepared, their shelf life is determined;  it will be shorter the longer they have hung for.

Team effort, this abattoir is only partly mechanised, so although machines are used to help with plucking the birds, people are operating the machines, doing a particular part of the cutting, evisceration and dressing, then passing the carcass on to the next stage.. Sometimes the birds are hung by their feet from slotted metal bars while they wait for the next stage. It’s all labour intensive, and in a small work space adapted from an old welsh milking parlour, people and carcasses are flying and sliding around in a Heath Robinson dance.  Gradually, exhausted workers are arriving. There's a butcher, hired for a few days before he goes off to other farms preparing meat for direct sale by mail order or at the Farmer's Market, a neighbour earning a bit of extra cash before Christmas, a schoolgirl in her holiday, a multi-talented builder. Employment here seems to be by association. Is this what Organic means?

A trolley rack is wheeled out, laden with well hung birds and the evisceration begins with one person efficiently working along the line, deftly cutting around the skin on the throat, pulling the skin back, carefully separating the wind pipe and crop. Now the neck can be cut using a sharp pair of secateurs; below the head and away from the body. Six kilo birds have got necks about 15 or 20 cms long, it is put in a container on the dressing table to be packaged with the other giblets. Next an incision has to be made around the vent so the really messy business of emptying the cavity can begin. The bird is transferred by another worker to a special work bench that enables it to be hung up at a convenient height. It is quite alarming, at first, to negotiate the cavity with a human hand; an organ that this space is not designed to accommodate. In, down, to the right, gently not to rupture the intestine, you come up against a roundish, smooth quite big organ which is the gizzard. A skilful eviscerator will be able to grab hold of this, index and fore fingers cradling the liver, and pull out almost everything in one go. The intestines, yellowy grey and coiled around pads of fat are allowed to fall away, pulling apart the tube connecting to the gizzard. The waste offal slides down a chute and is incinerated at very high temperatures on site. It can be a bit of a juggling act, but, rinsing under water the next step is to pull the gall bladder away from the liver. If this isn't done carefully it can rupture and the most amazing green bile squirts out tainting the liver's flavour, staining white overalls, burning skin and eyes. The liver is added to the tub full of necks. Today we are harvesting gizzards so they have to be prepared. The gizzard is about the biggest internal organ of a bird and is a powerful muscle containing a thick sack which the bird fills with abrasive stones, sand and even bits of quartz and glass. They use the gizzard as teeth to grind up food. The muscle is incredibly strong and the red meat makes fine eating. Toby brought a tin of duck gizzards from France a year or so ago and in their own rich fat made great boy food on toast. I remember googling geziers then to see what the hell they were, but now I know! We are splitting the oval shaped organ down one side, turning it inside-out, and easing the stone filled sack away from the muscle wall. The muscle goes in the pile of giblets; with the hearts and necks. At getting on for 100grams each and these organic turkeys selling for £10 a kilo, they are worth saving. The heart is unceremoniously pulled out, rinsed and added to the giblets. The final part of evisceration is to scoop out the lungs, it’s the trickiest bit and a naked finger is best for feeling through the peritoneum and teasing away the lights as they are known from the rib cage.

What was really difficult for us novices at seven in the morning was absorbing all of this gruesome anatomical detail in the context of it literally flying around your head, stiff birds being yanked around, organs flying across the room, offal slopping into tubs. Christmas songs blaring on the radio and even old hands having a titter to George Michael's Last Christmas while flinging a heart to the dressing table to join a bag of giblets.

When the bird has been rinsed it goes to the dressing table, gets a plastic bag of giblets; neck, liver, gizzard and heart placed inside it then trussed up with an elastic string. Into a bag, weighed, labelled and boxed. In this case they are being put straight on a refrigerated delivery van, but they may have gone into a cooler at less than 4 degrees.

Dodgy food

looking forward to the end of term and flying home to the land of sheep. where lamb tastes like lamb! Nice try ALMA, but the rosemary didn't quite Convince me!

Public auction of yearling yews in llanybydder .   www.oriel-jones.co.uk

On the way home

I- turned my back on the hundredth cake in 3 days: Thew my Zino in the car, flat tyre. thanks Cristiano and David for your support on the greasy fog town crossroads.  a great time in iper-coop buying  chrismas presents, quite indiscriminately so the process of distribution has to be  first come, first choice. I figure that if I'm here studying gastronomically family and friends wont be too surprisd to receive Sausages jars packets, bottles, cheeses, fruits and boxes of deliciousness.