Arance caramellate

Caramel oranges

One of my favorite pieces of food writing is from Elizabeth David’s Italian Food, in which she describes the kitchen of the Taverna Fenice in Venice. The colors of the kitchen, she notes, are reminiscent of a Venetian painting: saffron-colored polenta bubbling in a copper pan, an orange and umber sauce of tomatoes, rose-colored scampi and vermilion crabs contrasting with the marble table, coils of gold fettuccine drying in braided baskets, Sicilian oranges luminous with their sugary coating sitting in the larder. It is clearly writing from another time—1954, to be precise—but it’s incredibly evocative and I come back to it again and again, not least because it’s the introduction to one of my favorite fruit desserts with that luminous fruit in the pantry: caramel oranges.

Just three ingredients—oranges, sugar, and water—are interplayed cleverly. Oranges are peeled and then dipped in a simple sugar syrup. The peel is thinly sliced and caramelized in the same syrup before being piled on top of the now-glistening oranges. The sugar syrup, by now scented with orange essential oil, is reduced further and poured over the fruit. Once chilled, the oranges look like big jewels with a Philip Treacy headpiece sitting in a simmering puddle. They feel more like 1979 than 1954 because they remind me of the helix-print curtains with orange and copper swirls in my school friend’s living room.

serves 4

4 large organic oranges

¾ cup (150 g) superfine sugar

Using a vegetable peeler, carefully pare away the zest, taking as little pith as possible, from 2 oranges. Cut this zest into matchstick-size lengths and cover it with cold water in a small pan. Bring to a boil and cook for 7 minutes to remove the bitterness, then drain and set aside.

Now, working with a sharp knife, pare off the white pith from the zested oranges, and remove the peel and pith from the other ones. Set the oranges aside.

Make a syrup by dissolving the sugar in about ⅔ cup water over low heat, then increasing the heat and boiling until it reduces and forms a syrup that coats the back of a spoon. Roll the oranges in the syrup, letting them sit for about 5 minutes, turning and rolling from time to time so as to soak up as much syrup as possible. Arrange the syrup-soaked oranges on a serving plate.

Put the blanched zest matchsticks in the syrup over medium heat, bring to a boil, and cook until they are transparent but still floppy. Arrange a little pile of caramelized zest on top of each orange, pour the syrup over each one, then chill before serving just so.

Panna cotta

Panna cotta, which literally means “cooked cream,” is not in fact cooked. Cream, perhaps with a little added milk, is gently warmed with sugar and often a vanilla pod, mixed with softened gelatin, then molded and chilled. The resulting custard is a delicate set cream turned out on a plate, and looks like a smooth, milky-white sandcastle, which—and apparently this is the key—quivers and wobbles like a woman’s breast.

That wobble means that the panna cotta is softly set. It should tremble as you bring it to the table, and your spoon should sink easily into the milky-white mound. The texture should be soft, smooth, silky, and untroubled. The taste should be simple and clean, delicate and dairy, of cream sweetened with sugar and flavored with real vanilla.

For such a simple dessert, there’s a lot of panna cotta advice around, and as with almost all Italian culinary wisdom, even the simplest of recipes comes with the obligatory suggestion: practice. So it was with the advice a friend gave me while we leaned against the bar in Barberini one gray Wednesday afternoon. When an Italian shares a recipe with you it’s likely to be dotted with variables and gestures that suggest “some” or “to taste” or, bewilderingly, “enough.” This is because they know and understand that ingredients, whether tomatoes, potatoes, butter, flour, cream, or vanilla, vary from kitchen to kitchen, from place to place, from season to season; that what may seem sweet to one person is not to another; that gelatin can be unpredictable; that wobbles are personal.

With the spirit of Italian culinary wisdom in mind, and working on the principle that panna cotta, once made, is something you’ll probably want to make again and again, I suggest you treat the recipe below as a template. I use panna fresca, which is technically single cream but seems a little richer, but you will likely use heavy cream or half-and-half or a mixture of both. My friend was vague about sugar, making a tipping gesture when it came to telling me the quantity, which was charming but not very specific. A bit of trial and error ensued. I err on the not-so-sweet side and find that 6 tablespoons is about right. Vanilla? I like it, you might not; if I didn’t have the real thing I wouldn’t bother with vanilla essence, though. Gelatin is pesky stuff. You need enough to set your cream to the requisite quiver, but not so much as to seize it into the consistency of a car tire. I do hope you can find gelatin leaves; the powder is a pest and agar agar is just odd. You need 3 leaves in my book.

Even though panna cotta looks very pretty served in a glass with a layer of fruit sauce or syrup poured on top, I like mine turned out on a plate in all its milky-white, wobbly glory. I am happy to eat it just so, but I really like panna cotta with some fruit, or even better, a spoonful of fruit sauce. The idea of caramel or chocolate sauce might seem appealing, but I think it all ends up being too much. Panna cotta pairs well with sharp, edgy, acidic fruit, such as sour cherries, blackberries, cranberries, black currants, or red currants, all of which, cooked briefly or simply mashed with a tiny bit of sugar, offset and accentuate the creaminess and look wonderfully dramatic, like red lips and pale skin, next to your innocent white pudding.

serves 4 (6 at a stretch, but who wants to stretch?)

vegetable oil, for greasing, if needed

1⅓ cups heavy cream

⅔ cup half-and-half

1 vanilla pod

3 gelatin leaves

6 tablespoons to ½ cup superfine or confectioners’ sugar

You’ll need 4 metal panna cotta molds or ramekins (which need to be lightly greased with vegetable oil). If you don’t want to turn them out, use 4 glasses.

Pour the cream into a pan. Use a small sharp knife to split the vanilla pod lengthwise, then scrape the seeds out. Add the seeds and split bean to the pan. Warm the cream gently over low heat, but do not allow it to boil. Remove from the heat and set aside for 10 minutes so that the vanilla infuses into the milk.

Soak the gelatin leaves in a bowl of cold water for 5 minutes, or until they are very soft and floppy.

Remove the vanilla pod from the pan. Return the pan to low heat, add the sugar, and stir until it has dissolved. Squeeze the water out from the gelatin leaves and add them to the pan. Stir until the gelatin has dissolved. Remove the pan from the heat.

Divide the mixture between your molds or glasses and chill in the fridge for at least 3 hours. To turn them out, dip the base of the molds briefly in boiling water, then invert onto serving plates. Serve just so, or with a spoonful of sharp fruit sauce or coulis.

Caffè

Before arriving in Italy I hadn’t drunk coffee for several years, for several reasons, none of which are particularly interesting. I returned to coffee-drinking with a ristretto in a noisy bar near Napoli airport about an hour after I first landed. As the intense half-inch of dark liquid invaded every crevice of my palate and seeped into my system, I enjoyed a moment of caffeine ecstasy that I’m not sure will ever be repeated. Tiredness banished, I then ignored advice and decided to find my bed-and-breakfast on foot. After an hour spent dodging cars and mopeds ridden by helmetless youths and walking down alleys strung out with damp washing, their walls encasing shrines to the Madonna framed with pink plastic flowers, and the air thick with Neapolitan dialect, I found myself back where I’d started. I had another espresso and caught a taxi.

In standard Italian, caffè means coffee, while bar means café, as in coffee shop or coffee bar. Romans love their caffè and the city is punctuated by bars in which the real business of life is conducted over small cups. In Testaccio alone there are 16 bars, all of which I have visited, but only one with any real loyalty: Barberini on via Marmorata.

In the early days I lived on the other side of the quarter, but now I live just around the corner from Barberini. These days I also have a companion, my little boy, Luca, who walks with me each morning, past the pet shop, the tabacchi, the bank, and then through the pale wood door up to the cashier of the bar I have visited most days for the last nine years. Despite the familiarity I will always be a straniera (foreigner), a term I don’t mind anymore; after all, I am. Luca, however, is not: he has grown up here, this is his bar. He pummels his fists on the front of the glass counter for a maritozzo, a sticky, yeasted bun, then pummels on my leg so that I will lift him up onto the lip that runs around the sickle-shaped bar. I have barely touched the 10 centesimi coin and the receipt on the counter before Paolo puts a cappuccino in front of me, its thick schiuma (frothed milk) resting in promising folds. Luca is given an espresso cup of the same creamy folds, which he eats with a teaspoon. Here it is, one of the best moments of the day and one of the things I love most about living in Italy: standing at the bar in a bar with a coffee before me. I drink in the moment and the contents of the cup quickly. People ebb and flow throughout the morning at Barberini. The bar might be surrounded by a three-deep throng, or just dotted: the woman from the launderette, a fireman from the station opposite, the girl from the canestro, and Laura from the spice shop, all engaged in breakfast contemplation, together but alone.

Later in the day I will return for an espresso. If it’s after three o’clock, the other Paolo is usually working and the bar is quiet, the machine shining accordingly, and the top stacked with warm cups. Watching a good barista make an espresso is something I never tire of, the series of movements and sounds that conclude in a small, white cupful: the dark roasted grounds deposited into the basket and pressed firmly, then twisted into place; the hiss of steam pressure within that forces the correct measure of water through the compressed coffee, resulting in a dribble of essence finished with crema, the thin layer of foam on top. I’m told the pour time is 20 seconds, but it depends on the machine. Vincenzo is habitual about having a glass of water before an espresso—in Sicily you are given one as a matter of course—and I have picked up the habit, since the flavor is heightened in a cold, clean mouth. The cup is placed on the saucer. Here it is again: that moment, which I drink in quickly, although not quickly enough to catch Luca, who is running round the bar as if he’s had several espressos and may well be trying to turn off the switch of the cake fridge. We say good-bye and leave.

At home I make coffee in the moka, or metal stovetop coffee maker, of which I have three different sizes that stand like unpacked Russian dolls next to the stove. Although it’s a simple device—a top and bottom screw together to enclose ground coffee in a compartment between them—a moka takes a little getting used to, to perfect the amount of coffee and water and recognize the delicious gurgle of the coffee erupting into the top section, at which point you turn the heat down. Made well, with the correct coffee grind, moka coffee has an enormous, full flavor and intensity—perfect in fact for the following two desserts, and the coffee granita.