Country Mouse
Note to self: remember that visits to southern Italy at the fag-end of February will not deliver craved-for sightings of spring flowers – nor the hum of insects.
In a classic example of doublespeak, I wrote in the visitors’ book of our host’s Puglian masseria that ‘The olive groves, with their few brave anemones peeping out of the wet grass, resembled an orchestra tuning up before a great performance commenced.’
No offence, as they say, to our hosts, James Pembroke, The Oldie’s publisher and restaurant critic, and his wife, Josephine. On the other hand, for stubbornly seasonal eaters like myself, with systems calibrated towards subsisting on Anglo-saxon root vegetables such as turnips, parsnips and squash during the dank months, there is much to commend a late-winter visit to the Saturday market in Ostuni. A feast for the senses awaited our vitamin-ddeficient house party of Englishmen as we marvelled over tables of colourful, Arcimboldo-type luxuriance groaning with purple artichokes, endives and cavolo nero to name a few.
‘Wouldn’t that go well with burrata… and some pancetta…?’ ‘And let’s buy some of that pecorino…’ Before long, we were ogling fishmongers’s slabs offering an abundance fit to rival Harrods Food Hall and discussing whether to go for small fish, big fish, shellfish or vongole at the pop-up restaurant attached. But first we must make a dash to the amazing Italian bakery for fresh-from-the-oven pane di campagna and pane con olive. At the bakery we are gifted with paper bag-ettes of child-sized taster loaves.
In Puglia, stallholders, shopkeepers and restaurant staff alike were uniformly polite, interested in us and indulgent of our attempts to speak Italian, unlike their French equivalents. They were genuinely keen to please and tease our palates. Shopping was once again a meaningful and life-enhancing activity, rather than the chore it has become back in Blighty.
Our vivacious hostess had advised us to stuff our cabin luggage with salamis, hard cheeses, bundles of dried oregano and freshly made taralli, the ubiquitous, ring-shaped, breadstick-like snack food – all of which produce we could buy at Waitrose. But here there’s an extra secret ingredient, the only one a supermarket cannot deliver, which I must conclude can only be the life force itself.
Back home, for two delicious days, the ‘force was with us’ as we feasted on this stowaway picnic food. When it ran out, it was with a heavy heart that I set off to our local town, whose own street market literally paled in comparison… like watching black-and-white TV after colour.
Farmers’ markets are no better. Mary and I used to attend them in search of bespoke and worthy artisan produce. But we felt guilt and angst at not being rich enough to buy – for example – the specialist sausages. Their creators, often a frazzled married couple, looked as if their very existence seemed to rest on whether you would shell out a fancy price for their sausages, hand-made from virtually their own very flesh and blood. We were mentally scarred by the reproachful looks we saw as we drifted away, our hands still in our pockets. No fewer than three delicatessens have sprung up and sprung down again in another local village. It was the satirist Craig Brown who first observed the deadly delicatessen equation: the bushiness of the beard of the delicatessen proprietor is in direct proportion to his preposterousness. Most regional delicatessens are owned by bearded men of a certain age. They are generally oversexed and play up to the female customers as if auditioning for a part in a light operetta.
As well as twirling paper bags in your face, Beardie inevitably forgets the golden rule of retailing, which is that the customer is always right. The Oldie’s late and much lamented Unwrecked England columnist, Candida Lycett Green, was told off for squeezing the only avocado of one poorly stocked outlet.
‘Why is this small jar of [Cotswolds] honey £8.95?’ Mary politely enquired in the same shop.
‘Because life is too short to eat rubbish!’ came the Beardie’s screamed reply.
On another day, a sandwich board outside boasted, ‘Traditional bacon buttie with pale-back bacon fresh from Vennford Farm, hand-cooked while you wait.’
Mary went inside. ‘Two bacon butties, please.’
‘Sorry, madam, the bacon buttie is not something we provide here. We tend to specialise in what you might call sophisticated foods for the more discerning palate.’
‘But why do you offer butties then on the sandwich board outside?’
‘I stand corrected, madam. I will go now and knock something up for you, but it may take some time as we do cook everything from scratch in this establishment and we will be using a sourdough loaf. I’m afraid we don’t do plastic bread here.’
Before Rick Stein opened up locally, the one upmarket restaurant had a female maître d’. She would always interrupt the flow of orders to give subtle signals that she was actually ‘one of us’ and only going through a charade of subservience in her current role.
The problem seems to be that, in England, the middle classes pose as shopkeepers; whereas, in Italy, shopkeeping is not a hobby.
At least you know where you are with Greggs and I have yet to hear the person serving me a sausage roll and hot chocolate say, ‘Actually, my father used to be part of a grouse-shooting syndicate in the Trossachs.’