Venetian food sets the senses alight

Fegato – liver and onions, Venetian style

Were you to ask most people in the UK to name an Italian food, it’s a fairly safe bet that spaghetti bolognese might be mentioned, along with pizza, pasta in general, panettone and ice cream.

Setting aside the point that the Bolognese would eat their classic ragu with tagliatelle and not spaghetti, some might be able to get a little regional, knowing that, for instance, it was Napoli that gave birth to the pizza.

But what of Venice and the Veneto? Many would be stumped, although it’s most famous dish outside Italy is almost certainly tiramisu – and when made properly, it comes without any alcohol.

On this matter, The Other Half approves, even though the presence of mascarpone in the ingredient list means he hasn’t ever tried it. Then again, while I don’t mind a dash of sweet sherry in a trifle, he disapproves of that too. I wonder if this is a sign of a Yorkshireman considering booze in a pudding as an unnecessarily spendthrift act?

But let’s set that aside for the present – although Yorkshire will make an appearance later.

When we first visited La Serenissima seven years ago, brief homework beforehand had meant that we knew about tiramisu, together with a few other local delicacies. Early spring is wonderful for many reasons, but it is not the time to expect rise e bisi – the iconic Venetian pea risotto.

It is, however, just in time for the very end of the radicchio season. Grown on the mainland around Treviso, this bitter, red and white leaf, is a regional speciality.

Tiramisu at the Peggy Guggenheim

As with most anywhere else, the key to finding the best food is finding where local people eat. By and large, that means avoiding anywhere declaring itself a ‘restaurant’. As an acquaintance insisted before the trip: look for trattorias.

On our first night, this led us to Ai Cugnai, around the corner from where we were staying on Dorsoduro. There, surrounded by locals – at least some of whom we suspected worked at the nearby university – we began our culinary trip in an old establishment that has clearly been in one family for many years, and is currently headed by the son, with the father now taking it easier by helping wait on tables.

In a friendly and relaxed atmosphere, we both began with a vegetable soup. Nothing complex, but perfectly cooked vegetables in a tasty broth.

Next up for me, an absolute classic of local cuisine: fegato – liver and onions, with polenta on the side. Again, this was not complex food, but good ingredients cooked well.

The following day, as the sun blazed down on us, we lunched al fresco at the cafe inside the Peggy Guggenheim museum – delightful confit salmon for me, with seasonal veg and a cream that had been ‘soured’ with lemon (as opposed to being yer actual bought ‘sour cream’), plus an excellent tiramisu. With no alcohol.

All the culture vulturey can be quite tiring. That evening, we crossed the Ponte dell’Accademia and, thanks to the excellent memory of The Other Half, found once more a place that we had enjoyed back on the first visit in 2010 and where I’d first experienced fegato.

Lunchtime calamari

Trattoria da Fiore was busy, but the staff managed to find us a table – next to a couple from Harrogate. In late middle age, they were quiet, but we were so close it was impossible not to hear to comments about how wonderful are the gardens at Prince Charles’s Highgrove home.

When the wife – who was only inches away from me – ordered fritti misti (fried fish and sea food) she appeared confident of what she was getting.

Except for one small detail: she clearly believed it was a version of goujons, complete with dipping sauce. The absence of any such sauce left her, after a short while, close to despair.

“It’s very dry,” she murmured in a drawl that was atremble with innate sadness.

They called the waiter.

“Do you not have any tartare sauce or may-o-nnaise?” she asked, her mournful voice bursting with the suggestion that there was not a culinary establishment on Earth worthy of the name that would not, at the very least, have these in tear-open sachets.

The young man explained, in excellent English and entirely patiently, that this was the way the dish was an no, they didn’t have such condiments in the building. He left.

A moment or so later: “I’m sure he could have found something,” she intoned wearily.

I was biting my tongue, trying desperately not to burst out into hysterical laughter, and with a memory unfolding in my head of Catherine Tate’s ‘disgusted couple’ sketches.

Later, albeit without this as my intent, I restored some dignity to us Brits in a conversation with the maître d’. He had come to check whether our meal was fine. I responded with asking whether the radicchio in my pasta dish was from Treviso and wasn’t the season over yet? All this enthusiastically, I should add.

The Other Half says that his expression suggested that he was genuinely impressed.

Rather earlier, our young waiter had come around carrying a platter of the fresh fish and seafood the place had that night. There was no smell – in other words, this was as fresh as you can get. I picked two shellless crabs for my starter.

Superb guinea fowl at La Bitte

I’d never had them before – genuinely doubted whether they were really shell less (and then how do you eat them etc). But oh my, they were lovely. Sweet – but not the overpowering sweetness of much British crab meat. They came with a little polenta, some of that Treviso radicchio – a perfect counterbalance to the sweetness – and some lettuce.

And I enjoyed – very much so – a big, bold pasta dish of mushrooms, gorgonzola, walnuts and radicchio for my main.

The following day, after long wandering, we had a basic lunch. But though we expected little, it was perfectly decent. I enjoyed a large plate of calamari, with lemon. Done right, what else do you need?

That evening, we pulled big time in culinary terms.

Thanks to top food journalist Joanna Blythman, we knew to try to get into La Bitte, which was only about a 10-minute walk away from the hotel where we were staying.

It has no website booking facility, but our hotel rang up for us and did the business. We were in.

La Bitte is small and rustic and intimate. It is dedicated to the meaty food of the mainland Veneto rather than the fish of the lagoons.

And oh my god – it is a joy.

We both started with a smoked carpaccio of beef: plenty of it; delicate beyond belief and sitting atop a pillow of fresh, tasty salad leaves – all dressed in Balsamico. If it sounds simple, well then yes – it was. But how many places get such apparent ‘simplicity’ so right?

For me, I followed that with guinea fowl.

Good grief – half a bird, tender as anything yet falling off the bone, served with a velvet-smooth cream sauce. How the hell can that be done? It’s a culinary contradiction! For the meat to flake, it needs long-slow cooking, yet doing that will render it tough and dry.

I asked.

Apparently, the game is cooked long and slow. In cream, together with pancetta and sage.

So when the meat is lifted out and some of the cream sauce strained, it’s flaking and yet moist.

Served with quenelles of Jerusalem artichoke, this was utterly stunning. I’ve been to posh places in London that cannot come close to this. It was simply glorious.

Ravioli at  Taverna La Fenice

Maintaining an almost dangerously rich note, I ended with a vanilla panna cotta – impossibly light yet rich, and with a caramel sauce that had the authenticity of length, with just the suggestion of burnt toast at the end.

Stunning – simply stunning.

Over the rest of the visit, we returned to Ai Cugnai (where I sampled sarde soar – in effect, sardines done in a way similar to rollmops) and enjoyed a really fine pre-opera lunch at Taverna la Fenice, which managed to combine posh with local, seasonal quality.

There, we enjoyed there first asparagus of the year in simple crudités, with virgin oil and mustard – and I had an excellent dish of white meat ravioli with a gusty gravy (you can’t call it a ‘sauce’) and slivers of truffle.

One of our other discoveries this trip was the wine: forget the piss poor excuse for a pinot grigio or soave that you are likely to be served in UK hotels, the real deal is excellent.

Venice is a joy for many reasons. But this was the visit that helped us really appreciate just a few of the ways in which it can tantalise the tastebuds.

Just promise me that you won’t ask for any tartare sauce.

New season, new kitchen

Counts as 'cooker porn'?

If there was one thing – apart from seeing our cats again – that made the return from holiday worth while, it was coming back to a new kitchen, just in time for a new season.

In the last week, a number of people have commented, of our having been away while the work was done in our home, that we were very ‘trusting’.

The implication being that they would be reluctant to leave their own homes in the hands of “contractors”.

It’s difficult, though, to know how they’d continue to live in a home while a room such as a bathroom or kitchen is being gutted and completely re-fitted.

That Tardis carousel

Three weeks using a bucket instead of a loo – unless they get workmen to spend time refitting one every day at the end of the work? Take-away meals for the duration? Yuk!

We’re incredibly fortunate to have Ian, a local, old-fashioned tradesman, has done a wonderful job yet again. And it not only all looks great, but works so much better too.

We have, in the last week, been able to get pretty much everything sorted out and into its new place.

As explained previously, it was an excellent opportunity to cull and clear. Now, though, I have one cupboard that must be the Tardis in disguise – it’s so big, with a carousel inside, that it stores every single pan, casserole, oven dish, earthenware pot, tagine, jug and large serving bowl that I have!

One very deep drawer now takes all my bakeware – which used to take a whole cupboard and a drawer – while another substantial drawer takes ladles, serving spoons, most of which had been hung on the wall, and another cupboard easily hosts all the slightly less-used gadgets, such as the mandolin and the potato ricer.

Neat and tidy – and so much more work space!

Pull-out sections bookending the cooker hold all the tea and coffee-making kit on one side, and all my herbs, spices, salts, vinegars and oils on the other.

The crockery is now displayed in the shelf unit/dresser, while all the cups, mugs and glassware are in further cupboards.

The entire effect is one of far less clutter, while it’s all so much lighter, too.

The butler sink came into its own on the first day back, as it allowed us to soak and wash out the big, retro, enamel bread bin, that previously would not go in a sink.

And of course, although I’m still getting used to the cooker – it has had me purring since day one – while the splashback that we made of features tiles from Casa Latina in Collioure, and the drawer and cupboard handles from the same source, looks lovely.

After just a brace of hobs on this trip to France, the Rangemaster is a big step up!

I should add that the new fridge – the old one was dying on us and would have needed replacing anyway – is a piece of magnificent Bosch. We took account of width and nothing else when planning, but this is another massive step up.

And it provides far more fridge magnet space too – I had a joyous task at the weekend ‘curating’ our personal art gallery!

I had been told, in conversation with a friend, that when buying white goods, the best – and most simple – advice is: “Go to John Lewis and buy as much Bosch as you can afford!”

Our washing machine for the past two years has been Bosch and I can easily see the wisdom in that advice. The fridge-freezer merely confirms it.

But all of this has had me thinking about how our cooking areas and facilities have been reduced in the last three decades.

Not a posh cooker – just an old one

Back in the 1970s, it would hardly have been a luxury to have a cooker that had both an oven and a separate grill.

However, the years since, and the advent of built-in cookers, have seen this end as the norm.

More recently, we’ve moved to new homes being built with, in some cases, only enough room for a microwave.

As food journalist Joanna Blythman relates in one of her books, a developer who planned holiday homes with just a microwave found themselves having to re-do kitchens when Continental visitors complained at the lack of proper cooking equipment.

And as Blythman also uncovered, the UK accounts for more than half the European ready-meals market, while the figure for snack products is similar.

There’s an interweaving of things here, but as I’ve also said many times, there is also a poor culture when it comes to how we see food in the UK.

A few weeks ago, I happened to overhear a ‘conversation’ between a mother and child, the latter having only recently turned three.

“What do you want for your dinner?”

“Dippy chips.”

“You can’t have dippy chips every night!”

The conversation did not, you probably won’t be surprised to know, take place in France.

When and how did it become considered sensible or appropriate to ask a small child what they want to eat? When did it somehow become bad parenting to deploy the old ‘you eat what’s in front of you’ routine?

The glories of a Bosch fridge

For the record, the mother in question is not particularly young and is a working professional.

Having said that, on the subject of school meals, I’ve heard otherwise apparently intelligent adults arguing that choice is good for young children – precisely because it teaches them to choose.

Which is idiotic reasoning. You teach them about proper food – and then, when they’re a lot more grown up and they have some of the food skills required to make choices, they can start choosing.

Why would making choices – without experience and knowledge – be a positive thing? And especially when they are, in effect, up against companies, including big corporates, that are out to make a profit that may be increased by providing less-than-healthy options?

It’s like David v Goliath where people are suddenly rooting for the giant.

‘Choice’ can mean a salad over there and the lasagna and chips over here. How many six or seven-year olds do you know who won’t choose the latter, with all the sugars and salts and fats made to make it attractive?

I spent a day in a school canteen a couple of years ago – and it was far from being a bad canteen, with all food made from scratch by a dedicated team – but because they have to offer ‘choice’, there are children who happily (and apparently regularly) just choose a plate of stodge. And I heard the dinner ladies trying to encourage them to try something different.

The artiest Bosch fridge in town?

There’s a substantial part of the issue with that overheard mother, though, of sheer laziness.

Of course it’s difficult when both parents are working, but is copping out on what you actually feed your child really the only option?

Why does the myth persist that it is ‘difficult’ or too time consuming to cook a meal properly, from scratch, in the evening?

What you eat is one of the most important factors in your life – and if you’re nurturing a child, it should be even more important.

And you don’t need a double oven and a butler sink. But what the gradual reduction of kitchen spaces in homes does do is to shore up the attitudes that then lead to this kind of behavior.

They lead to the decline in sales of dining tables – and the seven-year-old who cannot use a knife and fork properly.

That’s another example where the parents were white-collar, full-time workers who couldn’t be arsed to feed their child properly after a day at work, so relied on finger food, takeaways and frozen pizzas while they concentrated on the important things in life, such as what’s on the telly.

It does beg the question of how much this syndrome is a question of both partners having to work or the ‘conveniencing’ of our diet.

I’d suggest it’s primarily the latter, since women in working-class communities have had to work for centuries. The textile mills didn’t run on unmarried, childless female labour, for instance.

The difference now is the vast development, in the last 40 years, of ready-meals, microwaves and the takeaway culture.

It has denuded our collective culinary skill level and the result is a culture where increasing numbers of people feed themselves – and their children – badly.

And when you see food as fuel, and all fuel as having the same value, then you’re well on the way down this route.

The examples I’ve given are far from unique. This morning, the BBC online included a report that 12% of UK three-year-olds have tooth decay.

It came a day after I saw a mother on a bus with three small children, explaining to her partner that one of them had had chocolate, a sausage roll and crisps to eat that day – and was still hungry.

And it was only last Friday that I happened to see another small child in a pushchair complaining to his mother that he’d finished the large tube of Pringles and wanted something else.

Laziness, ignorance – and, of course, lack of money, all feed into this, along with the (partly mythical) cheapness of ultra-processed junk food.

A big tube of Pringles is well over £2. You can buy a 500g bag of pasta for comfortably under 50p, a 400g of tinned tomatoes for well under 40p, an onion and some garlic for next to nowt.

Even allowing for a little oil and seasonings that you’ll need from the cupboard, that will create a simple meal that’ll take 30 minutes at most, in one pan on one hob, and will be infinitely cheaper and better for up to four people eating it than that single tube of Pringles for one small child.

So, irrespective of the cooker – let’s take autumn as the opportunity to get cooking proper, real food for ourselves and our families!