Our Very Own Room with a View
The English have always had a love affair with Tuscany. At the beginning of A Room with a View Lucy Honeychurch and Miss Bartlett complain that they did not get the rooms with the views that they had been promised in the Pensione Bertolini. Eventually Lucy agrees to swap rooms with the Emersons who have a view of the Arno: ‘It was pleasant....to lean out into the sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment.' The art and scenery impressed them a great deal and it is described in evocative detail but it always seemed extraordinary to me that they never mention the food!I dream about Italian food. My favourite recipes are Italian. And this year, when my family rented the magical Villa Teatro, not far from San Gimignano, we spent almost the entire week planning what to eat for lunch.We could smell the wild fennel and thyme as we walked through the fields and olive groves on the way to the local market at Montespertoli. Just choosing the finest ingredients on sale that particular day; catching the opportunity of eating the freshest food in season, for Tuscany provides a sense of immediacy, a capacity to capture the essence of a fleeting moment, was not to be missed. A bottle or two of Chianti, a sour dough loaf, a variety of salads, tomatoes, olives, slices of sausage and mountain cured ham, some creamy ewe’s milk cheese, a hard and salty pecorino, a bag of cherries, fresh peaches, all crammed into the shopping bag.
Lunch didn’t involve any cooking. We were on holiday after all. Plates of antipasti were miraculously assembled and laid out on the long table under the trees to create perfect meals and our very own Room with a View.
And for dessert - for even a simple al fresco lunch is not complete without a
dessert - a bowl of fresh mascarpone with toasted walnuts and laced with local
runny honey. Ambrosia.
Theo Hodges
Theo Hodges was born in Kent. After a degree in Graphic Design she joined J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency as an Art Director working on accounts such as Rowntrees, Kraft and The Butter Council. While she was at University in Perugia, Italy she started collecting recipes from friends and family. In 1980 she set up her own design agency: Theo Hodges Design Consultants. For many years when they were young Theo, her sister and six cousins used to spend vacations at her Grandmother’s Victorian vicarage in Kent. ‘The thing about remembering childhood’ she says, is ‘there’s a whole lot of oblivion, and then out of it something floats up, quite sharp and clear. Many of the meals I can still see vividly and various recipes of mine were originally from Granny’s kitchen. ‘The kitchen garden was stuffed with raspberries, huge red dessert gooseberries, strawberries, runner beans, peas and much more with the hens in a shed at the back. But Granny only ate chicken breast and runner beans, followed by raspberries and Jersey cream - and therefore so did we. When raspberries were out of season, and in those days the season was much shorter, Granny made Victoria sponge cakes sandwiched with cream and home-made raspberry jam. On this limited but delicious diet we all thrived’. Theo’s mother was an excellent cook as well, and had been taught by the house- keeper at their house in Mougins, South of France. And once rationing was withdrawn in England in 1952 and good, fresh ingredients became available again, she amassed an enormous number of recipes which has formed the basis for Theo’s collection of family desserts.