A Quiet Life #5: the joy of simple cooking

In this post I'd just like to share a recipe. One of those simple dishes with just a few ingredients which seems to bring out the best in all of them, it's an easy pasta dish using leafy kale greens with anchovy and garlic. It works well with leafy greens in general, the best I've …

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A Quiet Life #4: the lemon tree

In a pot in the garden is a small lemon tree. It's about 70cm tall, covered in fierce thorns and, at this time of year, is looking a little dishevelled after a winter spent outside in a climate it's not suited to. About five years old, it is the sole survivor of school holiday project …

Making an Easter tradition: ciambella mandorlata

About 20 years ago I wanted to learn how to make bread so I bought a book, Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno's Bread. One of its recipes is for an Italian Easter bread, ciambella mandorlata, originating in Bologna. It's a brioche-type bread – the dough enriched with lemon zest, eggs and unsalted butter – topped …

The Cast Court, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Standing beneath Trajan's column following the frieze as it winds it way upwards, round and round, telling the story of the a eponymous emperor's bloody wars in Dacia, I marvel at how close up to it I can get. The column's too tall, though, so the top half is sitting quietly next to the bottom …

Wordless Wednesday #4: old-school panorama of the Roman amphitheatre, Pompeii, Italy, September 1999

Winter dreaming: the Greco-Roman theatre at Taormina, Sicily

On days that I work from home I'll always start with a walk. Nothing special at all, just a way to get some fresh air and a little exercise before turning on the laptop. Today, leaving the house I looked at the sky and was confronted with a quintessential January day in southern England: it …

An Englishman’s Italian-American Christmas

We all have our Christmas traditions and my family is no different. I count myself very lucky that I'm married to someone whose traditions are different from my own so over the years we've developed our own version of two ways of doing Christmas. As an American she has a heritage spanning Europe, the one …

An Italian oddity in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Every town has its oddities and Cheltenham is no exception. Behind the Town Hall in Imperial Square, tucked away in a recess in one of the buildings is a fountain. It's not functioning, or even very clean, but there it sits behind a fence with a nice little ornate hedge in front of it. The …