Nonna Vittoria's Crostata

I have been carrying around Nonna's recipe with me for ages ,it goes from one scrap paper pile to another and I don't want to lose it, so maybe on the blog it is safe for posterity. It is all a bit rule of thumb and when I tried it it didnt quite come out right but am assuming that is more me that the recipe since my grans is yum. Unless something is lost in translation.

1 kg flour
6 eggs
350g butter or marg
1 grated lemon rind
2 sachets yeast
vermouth
any kind of jam

Knead up
Keep some dough aside for criss cross strips on top.
oil the cake dish
oven at 150 degrees C
You need to check to see when its cooked good.

Well if works for Nonna, maybe something has been lost in the translation. Certainly gran's quantities are for a family of 6-16!

I paste a link to the most similiar recipe http://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/crostata-di-marmellata.htm

Expedition to Essex

One of the things about living in London is your diary is planned many weeks and months in advance - currently its the first of March and at the moment I think my first free weekend is somewhere in August. Many things seem like a good idea at the time and often they are, but sometimes "wanted to go" turns into " I got to go". Fortunately, saying " I've got to go to this thing" often gets you out a lot of last minute and less interesting invitations......Anyways, last night after 2 months of being diarised I duly headed of to Essex for the 40th birthday of a colleague who is pretty cool.
Now Essex, is the world of Footballer's Wives. It is the mothership of bleache blonde, the head office of the St Tropez tan and is filled of young women tripping not so daintily in impossible heels and impractical outfits on the hunt for a rich banker husband. So naturally,I was keen to see this all on home turf. But alas,my experience didn't really prove that Essex is to London what Alberton is to Johannesburg.
Either I passed them all along the way as they were headed into London town for a Saturday night of fun and debauchery or else its just another urban legend debunked. I didn't see anything noteworthy at all. Great party full of friends and family and lots of kids past their bedtime and the scenery was just middle class suburbia, the same as everywhere else.
So with nothing exciting to report I think I will just share some pics from the recent February snowstorms that brought London to grinding halt (only happens once every 20 years you see)
Light bulb moment of the day today: Was thinking of the old adage, Treat' em mean keep'em keen and I think the corollary applies too. Whenever you treat them keen, they can't help but turn out to be mean.

Some International Kulcha on Ash Wednesday

Not overly busy at work today and in need of some extra enlightenment so I dashed away from work at 5:00 on the dot as though I was any other normal 9-5er and headed off to St George's Cathedral for mass. Never been there before but its not far from my flat and just opposite the Imperial War Museum I thought I would give it a go.




So there I was looking around at the pews randomly being filled up 1 solitary person at a time - all trying to sit as far away from anyone else as they could and as close to the exit. I find it amazing how a city with 10 million people never seems to have enough people to fill a Catholic church - but then I wouldn't normally notice cos I am never normally there. The English aren't very Catholic at all - it all dates back to Henry VIII wanting 6 wives and causing a lot of bloodshed and strife - except if they live in the suburbs and want to get their kids into the best schools, then you can't get a pew for love or money.




Anyway after an unaccompanied but familiar hymn (you would think a cathedral could have an organist or a choir or something) we are onto the first reading. It took me several moments to realise that the reading was in English and as they had the same reader for most of the mass I was working very hard on deciphering the messages from my Lord. The Nigerian lady who was reading wanted me to pray for "people of all fetes and dominations", said that God would "rword" me and wanted us all to ask for "mussy". Similiarly, the priest whose accent I couldn't place but I put somewhere north of Zim and south of Nigeria was more understandable and pretty good at the short, sharp, stern bite size sermon but it also required some tuning into. But anyway after cottoning on to the need to "geevdem love" when talking about others I was almost down with the whole religious spiritual experience until I realised that the woman on my right kept muttering repeatedly "fuck you" and "you can fucking try" under her breath. While I had been trying to interpret the readings into English I had zoned her out and thought she was saying the Rosary, but now I realised that there was a serious case of Tourette's happening so when it came to offering each other the sign of peace I turned to my left to be welcomed by an Irishman saying "Pease be widyu". Sorry my phonetic spelling in not so good but you get the idea.


It struck me as the congregation was going up for communion that I had actually understood more of the midnight mass I went to on Christmas Eve in the Antwerp Cathedral than I had of this one and that was in Flemish, and of course it had been full to standing room only and there was a choir and an exquisite organ. I guess Christmas is bigger than Ash Wednesday.


So the mass being over a took a stroll up to front to light a candle in front of St Thomas of Canterbury (the Martyr) only to find the signage and prayers around the candles all written in Spanish - but I figure Divino Nino Jesus will be OK with me praying in English.

On my way out I saw a sign saying "This Cathedral costs £899 a day to maintain, please bear this in mind when making donations". Fair enough I thought - but I just watched about 200 people hand over pocket change and I got some serious stares when I popped a £20 in the offer tray- next time will sent a checque and claim Gift Aid.

The cathedral is quite interesting - probably not on the list of London's top 100 attractions but then the city has so much to offer that lists are meaningless. It was destroyed by enemy action in 1941 and restored in Gothic Revival style but they ran out of money and so the tower and spire are missing now. Amongst the items of interest there is a large bronze crucifix in the south aisle which came from the Chateu of Napolean and was brought to Southwark by the Emperor of Austria. How he came to have it I don't know. For more on the history of the cathedral visit

http://www.vauxhallandkennington.org.uk/stgeorges.shtml

http://www.southwark-rc-cathedral.org.uk/cathedral/index.htm

So what was the serious lightbulb moment you may ask ? Well, I say, here is an idea for a budding young musically talented entrepreneur. If you were to record the basic soundtracks, just simple piano or guitar accompaniment to the standard hymnal book songs, then you could sell it round the world to all the Catholic churches , thousands of them, who are either to impoverished or undersubscribed to have volunteer musical directors let alone choirs or organs. The hymn music is pretty standard the world over and if it meant not having to sit through another dour mass with no sweet notes I would happily put some start up capital into it. I haven't done the numbers but I think maybe £20 a CD for say 20,000 churches as a first stab might be worth spending a few Saturday afternoons in front of the keyboards.

Oh, by the way I am giving up alcohol and sugar for Lent. So far so good...