Life on balconies and windowsills

These days I'm waking up late to slatted light streaming in through the grey blue shutters in the morning, staccato sounds of engines and voices rising from the streets below rattle me into being. A long lost friend is often found silhouetted on the windowsill smoking calmly six floors high.

Coffee becomes our only routine and we sample different cafes daily. We perch among the pigeons on a thin balcony in the Piazza with sugared fingers and cocoa-covered legs as the inevitable result of a good cornetto. A Gatsby fueled whim is then indulged at the Caffe' Le Logge where peacock feathers gleam doubly in gilded mirrors and chandeliers, and our coffee is accompanied with black chocolate and almonds. We return there one evening with friends for an aperitivo. Skewering green olives, the Italians follow an unusually strong Spritz with an equally heavy Negroni and Erika takes Talisker, neither of which do much to relieve the suffocating humidity of the night into which we wander afterwards.

photo by Erika Lewis

On other nights we cook together at home, over stuffing ourselves with Italian classics taken from a beautiful book of Erika's called 'POLPO' and mulling over future business ventures. We eat anchovy stuffed courgette flowers and divinely fresh buffalo mozzarella with basil and tomatoes. We roll thyme-scented Arancini and blitz rocket and walnuts in preparation for the party we are hosting later that evening. Chianti in hand,  we attempt pizzette which burst with flavour but are let down by my cursed inability to get on with yeast. This is followed by a dessert of  tiny saffron infused pears drizzled in amber moscato with whipped cream and pillows of meringue; all are defeated by it so it lingers sunken and sticky until breakfast the next day. The pears we had bought from a favourite character of mine at the Wednesday market, the beekeeper Luigi. Brown and stooped with quiet movements, he has always appeared suspicious of my foreignness, smiling a wise and closed smile, usually wordless. As usual he was selling a small selection of other things aside from honey, and the wooden crate of pears none larger than a wren in size caught both mine and Erika's eyes. I tentatively questioned Luigi about these and he gave us one each to try, telling me they were called 'uccellini' (little birds) by the locals, weighing out a kilo of them as he spoke, for which I paid next to nothing. Perhaps we gilded the lily, drowning them so in unctuous liquor, but it was delicious nonetheless.

photo by Erika Lewis

Lazy Sundays are spent basking above the terracotta  rooftops squinting out towards the mountains, listening to Paul Simon and dunking cantuccini in our coffee. A hummingbird moth flirts briefly with us and we talk of Dali and skulls and how some moths have no mouths. Idly, I paint my nails with iridescent rust. Later, we strike out for an ice cream at my preferred gelateria around the corner, where I usually choose strawberry and dark chocolate. Then, in a more energetic mood we go to feed the goats and the donkey at the old Orto where the enthusiastic goat warden's hearty laugh as he hands you crusts and looks on delightedly is infectious.

Another of our strolls, after not quite perfecting pizza at home, is with the sole intent of sampling what the local pizzerias have to offer. After stopping at various locations, seeking out fountains and retreating greedily to the shade with numerous paper bags, we conclude that Menchetti's is the best. This is closely followed however by our last buy which we were truthfully too full to appreciate, a spicy artichoke and spinach stuffed spiral at an unassuming sort of place on the way home. Soon, I'll be in Sicily with Marta and her family where I know that all such ideas of pizza will be usurped, more lazy days will be spent in the sun, on the beach, on boats and on mopeds. Even after a year has passed, I still can't quite fathom that I am here in Siena at all and it is tugging at my mind while I sleep and while I talk and say goodbyes as everyone leaves except me.

"Pizzette croccante" di casa nostra

Menchetti's (photo by Erika Lewis)

Summer in Siena

Summer is my favourite season, on a culinary level , due to the ease with which it lends itself to deliciously quick puddings, such as those in the style of Nigel Slater whose book on the subject, I worship. Unaccustomed to the heat of Siena in July, I have fast developed an aversion to slaving over the stove for excessively long periods of time and am now appreciating the value of these types of recipes even more for their reliance on raw ingredients. Easy, refreshing recipes like these, equivalent to the English classic of strawberries and cream at Wimbledon, have been my saviour whether I have been on my own after a hard training session under the sweltering sun or hosting dinners for family and friends over the days of the Palio where routine goes out of the window in all of the frenzy.

All one needs is some great seasonal fruit, particularly abundant in Italy, and a bit of imagination. Here, I bought some peaches that unfortunately were not ripening as quickly as I would have liked so I resigned myself to cooking them lightly just to soften them a little. What I deigned to cook them in was determined purely by a recent obsession of mine and could easily be substituted with whatever you fancy (within reason clearly, I'm not advocating peaches in Guinness for example):

Dessert For One

2 peaches
1 cup almond milk
1tbsp honey
Ground cinnamon

Slice the peaches thinly, whether or not you remove the skins is up to you (I prefer to retain them for their nutritional value). Put them in a pan with the milk and honey over a medium heat until they are soft and the liquid has reduced slightly and taken on a pinkish hue from the peaches. Serve with a sprinkling of cinnamon.

Another recently installed staple into my mental catalogue of instantly gratifying desserts is anything that revolves around figs. At our local greengrocers you can choose between the bruised-looking black figs which are soft and sweet or their white alternative which taste less intense but have a clean freshness to them. For an impulsive farewell dessert, I bought a mixture, quartered them and and piled them atop a marscapone mountain drizzled generously in runny acacia honey - a classic flavour combination. Figs also work brilliantly for quick savoury dishes though, for example, scattered among slices of soft pecorino with a smattering of rocket leaves and again, a drizzle of honey.

 Figgy Salad (adapted from the Bible of Caldesi cooking)

Serves 4

This is a salad best created in layers rather than tossed together as it becomes rather messy otherwise and loses the contrast of flavours and colours a little.

400g goat's cheese cut into chunks
50g toasted chopped hazelnuts
4 figs
100g rocket leaves
The outer leaves of a lettuce
1 punnet of rasperries
2 tablespoons of runny acacia honey
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Black pepper

Fan the lettuce leaves out on a plate as a base for the salad, then place a layer of rocket on the top. Roll the chunks of goats cheese in the hazelnuts so that they are well coated, quarter the figs and gently break the raspberries up taking care not to squash them. Arrange these ingredients how you see fit on the greenery and then drizzle with oil, honey and a twist of freshly ground black pepper.