Verso buoni finali e buoni inizi! To good endings and good beginnings (and good coffee too!) What a time it is at present. “Mamma mia!” as Nanna Francesca would say, while Nonno Anni would likely raise his hands, palms up, as if all we can do is get on with it as best we can.
And so we do.
I’ve been back at my desk a week and Roger is back at work too so I no longer have my ‘personal barista’ in the house. Those who know, Mezza Italiana, may recall that on his first trip to Italy, Roger didn’t drink coffee and wouldn’t even go into a café with me, until he came to fall in love with all that is Italian, right up to growing and roasting coffee beans and even doing a barista course!
He’s never learnt coffee art but over our Christmas ‘holiday at home’ I asked if he wanted to try to create a different picture on our coffees each day and he happily gave it a go. Some are great, some maybe a little iffy, but that’s life really, a bit different each day and for the most part you sort of know what you’re going to get, but not truly and then there is the unexpected.
Auguri per l’anno and thank you for joining me here again. I can’t wait to share the next book with you later this year! Zoe xx
PS. I think my favourite might be ‘Aladdin’s lamp’.
Winter circles… kitchen, garden, lovely moon and of course, coffee (thanks to Roger’s barista skills!) It’s the best time for my favourite type of slow and oven cooking and the dishes pictured include (top right) ricotta gnocchi baked in the pan and (bottom left) a serpente of mushrooms and wild greens (but the snake got away on me a bit!)
Next step in the coffee process – the beans (or seeds) from inside the coffee cherries have been washed and are now drying.
It’s coffee harvest time again… these we picked from our backyard tree. Then, by hand, R extracted the beans from inside the coffee cherries and the beans are now spread out on wide sieves drying.
Zoë Boccabella 