Happy Canada Day! / Jour heureux du Canada!

Mes amis / My friends!

A great Canadian view...

More red food

Maybe it's something to do with keeping warm, but I am loving the bitter warmth of winter veggies at the moment -- like those strong green rocket leaves we're plucking from the garden a few times a week. Or radicchio.

Where radicchio runs free (briefly, pursued by eager Italian cooks)

I never used to like radicchio. It wasn't until we went to Treviso and saw its jewel colours there, and when I started reading about all the shapes and types of radicchio, well, I got curious.

As luck would have it, it's prime season for them now, and we've had a few of the firm bullet-shaped radicchio trevisano in the last few weeks.

Look, it's just like the picture!

I had it in a lunch salad, with sweet dollops of soft goat's cheese, some halved grapes, and a gentle vinaigrette.

Hmm, it goes well with sweet things. My books say olive oil, definitely a lover of oil and some salt. So the first time I used it, that's what we had: salad of beautiful leaves, crisp but well-coated in olive oil and with little bits of goat's cheese snuggled into the pockets formed by the leaves. I sliced some of it finely, sauted briefly (I think with a shallot?) and we had that on top of sweet lamb chops. Yum. We might have it that way again tonight. Bring the red wine.


So as for red foods, this one pops nicely between the beetroot dip and the pomegranates. (I made a batch of muffins today, with oatmeal, brown sugar, marsala-soaked raisins and pomegranate seeds. Mmm.) Now how do I get my fingertips back to a normal colour?

Beetroot, bags of crisps, and other things I don't blog about during normal blogging hours

If there's one thing a happy commuter does, it's to eat well. All that running for trains and sitting on your duff-el bag in the mornings can instigate a three-week long craving for sea salt chips in packets to be snuffled on the way home. For sanity and waistline, eat well and resist. That makes me happier.

We've been trawling the local farmers' markets (early winter produce) and enjoying what little we can get from our garden. I'm grateful to whoever planted the leeks and rocket in our garden. We're having leek and potato soup for dinner tonight, and that rocket - wow, it's got bite. I think it'll go into an eggy pie with ricotta and parmesan tomorrow.

Love the rocket's bitterness. You will work with and loooove the rocket's bitterness.

So this is what we are eating, and enjoying:

Beetroot dip
(from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion 2e)

This is one of those little recipes in the margins of the second edition. If you love beetroot (hands up) tat's me - cant type wih one hnd in the air - then this is divine. Even if you don't go for beetroot, this might be an mmmm experience. It's the garlic.


When you get your bunch of beetroot, all you do is rinse them briefly, hack off the green parts of the leaves (not the stem or the root), put them in a dish wrapped tightly with foil, and bake them for one or two hours. It helps proceedings in my house if there is a cake on the top shelf of the oven for the first hour.

If you haven't broken the skins, they will steam in their own jackets. You know they're done when they are soft enough to poke successfully with a fork. The skins will slide right off and you will look like Lady Macbeth as you do it.

The same day or a couple of days later, whack one or two of the peeled, roasted beets in a food processor with a small clove of garlic, a pinch of salt and a few seeds (not pods, just the black seeds) of cardamom. I like a 1/4 tsp of cumin, too. Blend it up, drizzle in olive oil and blend again. Keep adding oil until it's gloppy enough to dandle on the end of a breadstick. You're done.

I'm keen to try it in pitta sandwiches, with jacket potatoes, and even with those aubergines and carrots I've got roasting in the oven. Oh, and I steamed a handful of the younger beet greens, drizzled them with olive oil and stirred in a spoonful of this garlicky goodness -- divine.

Biennale Personalle

Two years ago today, we were in Venice*. As a celebration of that day out, here is a selection of photographs taken by Bev and I.

A water gate and window box achieving an Italian flag effect.

Candleholder for your plaque. Otherwise who is going to be scared by your wolf by night?

The vital Venetian chimney tops to collect sparks and avoid fire. Despite all the water, fire was a major risk.

Don't feed the cherub too much spinach.

"When you said two outboard motors, I thought..."

A delivery barge, a tree, a nap and thou...

The original Arsenal. Interestingly this Naval shipyard is still closed to the public, but I suspect the defences of Italy aren't dependant on their products as Venice's were.
Garden and church.

You can't get the plasterers to finish a job properly, here.

Church with tollbooth. Or is is an aquatic confessional?

* I'm writing this in the evening in Victoria, so it is the afternoon of the same day in Venice. With the international date line, you've got to be careful about such statements!

Seventy Years of 'Dunkirk Spirit'

Bombed on the beaches, British soldiers use Lee Enfield rifles to fire back at the German Luftwaffe. (BBC.)

It's 70 years since the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk from the temporarily-halted German forces between 26 May and June 4. It was officially 'Operation Dynamo' As is well known, much of the rescue work, coordinated and supported by the Royal Navy, was by the 'little ships' resulting in one of the rarest, and most cherished yacht badges seen since. (The St George's Cross flown from the jack staff is known as the 'Dunkirk jack' and is only flown by civilian ships and boats of all sizes that took part in the Dunkirk rescue operation in 1940. The only other ships permitted to fly this flag at the bow are those with an Admiral of the Fleet on board.)

Those fishing boats, ferries, yachts and dinghies ferried the soldiers from the beaches to the larger Royal Navy ships that could get no closer, and sometimes they took them all the way back - when the Channel must have seemed its widest.

This year 50 ships, many original survivors, set out to recreate that remarkably flotilla's incredible achievement.

In the middle of a war being lost, it was not a simple task, or one that was all good, nor as black and white as often portrayed. Herman Goering convinced Hitler that his Luftwaffe could finish off the soldiers on the beaches. The Royal Air Force (RAF) did their best, at significant cost, to stop them, but back and away from the beaches - a job often not appreciated by the soldiers bombed by those German bombers who got through. Time was bought by rearguard actions, particularly the 'last hope' garrison at Calais, dropped water and ammunition (but without hope of rescue or other relief) by a scratch force of RAF Westland Lysanders and outdated Hawker Hectors - two aircraft types named for military heroes of yore. Some French soldiers were rescued, others turned away - and later those rescued were mostly repatriated to France, after the French surrender.

"Wars are not won by evacuations" Churchill reminded a relieved Britain, but though denuded of their arms, those soldiers were going to be the last line of defence for European democracy - after the Royal Navy and the force tested next - the RAF, soon to come though victorious by a narrow margin in the Battle of Britain, and the high water mark of fascist fortune.

Here in the Imperial War Museum, London, is one of the little ships of Dunkirk- in fact the littlest, Tamzine - sailed by amateur or professional civilian sailors that brought the soldiers off the beaches. Author.

Since then the Dunkirk Spirit has rightly been an iconic symbol in British culture.

The BBC report on the flotilla here. The BBC also present an audio-slideshow, including original accounts recorded in 1990, here.

Interestingly, the event has been a popular topic for children's authors. [Edited to add I've done a review of a pre-eminent example here.]

James

I don't think so!

Mushrooms anyone?

Sundog I