Film Star, Food and Foliage (From Western Telegraph)

MAY 2010

6:31pm Sunday 2nd May 2010

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We went to the garden centre open day, you'll never guess who we saw!!

Colin Firth with friends. No we didn’t bother them for autographs, in fact everyone left them well alone so they could enjoy the day too. He's lost a lot of weight since Mama Mia, very slight with sunken cheeks. He is often seen in this area and we were told, by someone who has met him before, that the Mr Darcy bit was faked. The studio didn't allow him to swim in the lake, in case he caught anything, but they did throw (good clean water) over him as he stood at the waters edge to give the impression he'd done the dip. It does shatter the illusion a bit.

We had gone along to ask if the garden centre would quote us for trimming the 10 cypress's up our drive after the snow damage had caused the branches to swing outwards, giving them the look of loo brushes. They don’t look quite so bad since we tied them up like parcels but the blue rope does nothing to improve their looks. We’ll also need to top out the two huge Acacia’s by the pool (Bill & Ben) and cut off, at the base, the 3 Acacia’s over the top of the grotto. As the Acacia’s are all on slopes, another gale coupled with snow, could topple the lot and take the banks and a lot of terraces with them.

We bought strawberries and geraniums, amazing colours a cross between fuchsia pink and tangerine, 3 roses and two gooseberries. We met the saffron growers head of association and we tried his wine, with saffron in it. We couldn’t taste the saffron but the wine was very smooth. He also supplies his saffron to a local brewing company who add it to their bottled beer along with other flavourings like basil, liquorice and chocolate. Having recently eaten saffron risotto and actually been able to taste the flavour, not just admired the colour, we remarked the saffron here tasted much better that stuff we'd bought in the UK that had came from Turkey, North Africa or Morocco. He said in ancient times the saffron from this area of Italy was much prized and exported all over the world. The association are trying to get local farmers to take an interest in growing it again, but hand picking and drying the stamens is back breaking work and not many people want to try it.

We got talking to a young chef who opened his restaurant in town 2 years ago, just 6 tables, 8 in the summer, with a fixed price of 25 Euros per head but that includes 5 courses and wine. The menu varies according to what he buys each day so everything is 100% fresh and organic if he can. He started talking about the sort of things he provides and we were drooling but at that price it’s a celebration dinner, not every day for us. We ate lots of his cherries soaked in red wine, pear mustard and fig mustard - very sweet and a very strange idea - but went well with the mature cheese that Mike was packing away with gusto. The cheese, he said, was made by a local family and only produced 60kg per year, so goodness knows how much in value we consumed!

There were other chefs providing food, cooked as we watched, most interesting. They made risotto with spinach, mint and vegetable broth or we could try caramelised tomatoes and onions with soaked, squeezed dry bread heated through, both wonderful. They then made omelettes. 12 eggs beaten to a froth poured into a frying pan with a LOT of hot olive oil so it rose up like a soufflé, basil, seasoning with a little fresh pecorino grated on top. He flipped it using a saucepan lid back into the pan, by which time the oil had been absorbed, to finish cooking and then turned it onto a plate where it remained light and puffed up, scrumptious and not at all oily. There were perfiteroles filed with a pistachio ganash (i think) topped with plain melted chocolate. To finish they made a drink using chopped lemons and ice put into a 5ltr bottle, added lemon verbena leaves, mint, brown sugar and half a bottle of white rum, topped up with lemonade. Lid on, shake and serve in very small glasses. Very nice, we were a most appreciative audience and didn't move from the spot for 2 hours, meeting and greeting friends, as they arrived to eat.

We also met Yvonne, a doctor of chemical engineering who does things with gas, oil and LNG, world wide and lives in Panacale. She knows Dragon LNG and was surprised how well informed we were about the place. They are still trying to convince the Italians they were wrong to block the installation in the South of the country but that's another story... She was there because someone from the UK who was to exhibit had not been able to make it because of the volcanic disruption from Iceland, so she'd filled in with a computer show of the pool she'd made in her garden. Her geometra told planning it was a pond to irrigate her 200 olive trees (170 too many she says!) but it’s an organic swimming pool. A designer from Germany over saw the installation, it's massive with the deepest part at 2.5m being the swimming pool but the graduated shallower parts to the edges are the pond, where there are water lilies, etc. At the bottom are various types of gravel and sand, much like a septic system, and oxygenating plants. It's clear and warm and there are frogs in it and the Italians are horrified, but we though it very ingenious. She has a blog site of her own with photos and explanations of the work as it progressed.

Having eaten and spent too much we made our way back home having been at the centre for over 5 hours . It was a grand day out, and we even got to eat the cheese.