I’m sure Shakespeare or somebody must have written about the joyful face of the humble primrose. If not, he/she should have!
P.S. a few minutes of Google and this I found (I’m feeling poetic now):
Ring-ting! I wish I were a primrose,
A bright yellow primrose blowing in the spring!
The stooping boughs above me,
The wandering bee to love me,
The fern and moss to creep across,
And the elm-tree for our king!
William Allingham
Wishing. A Child’s Song.
Un mazzo di fiori = a bouquet, in English (borrowed from the French).
There’s a tiny flower shop on one end of Vasari’s Loggia dei Pesce, which used to be in the area of present-day Piazza Republica but was moved and reassembled in its current location in the Piazza dei Ciompi in 1956.
In the photo below, you can see the diminutive Loggia and at the very end, the small kiosk flower shop.
The flower shop looks like this from the front:
I love this little shop. I walk by it at least once a week and I never go by without stopping to admire, and sometimes to buy, some of the beautiful flowers and horticultural wonders. I currently have several forced hyacinth bulbs blooming in my apartment. They were purchased last week at the shop.
Here you will find fresh-cut ranunculus, roses, the prettiest shades of tulips, as well as cyclamens and trellised plants of winter berries.
Carnations as well. Lots of sprays of grasses and even some tropical leaves. It’s a tiny place, but a lot of wonderful things are packed in!
Forced bulbs are the answer for now!
So, I love to bake. The funny thing is that I am not much of a sweets eater, but I love to bake.
So, naturally, I’ve been experimenting in my new kitchen in Florence with baking. It has been a hoot and a half getting to know the baking aisles at my local grocery stores, where I can often be found reading the fine print on the back of boxes, doing my best to understand the complicated Italian language as it describes the mysteries found inside the box!
For example: what do you think this is?
From the picture on the box, you might think it is a cake mix. Ha ha! You’d be very wrong. It is potato flour/starch. Some of the recipes I’ve been playing with here require this completely new to me ingredient. I felt like a winner when I finally found it on a grocery store shelf.
Here’s the back of the box. I decided to make these ricotta muffins, muffin all ricotta, but turn the muffins into a torta or cake. I am still getting used to measuring grams rather than cups. You can see the ingredients list is:
125 g di ricotta fresca ricotta
80 g di zucchero sugar
70 g di farina 00 flour, ground to 00
50 g di fecola di patate potato flour/starch
50 g di burro butter
1 uovo egg
a mela rosso red apple (later we learn to slice thinly with skin on and lay a piece of apple inside the batter in each muffin cup)
mezza di bustina lievito per dolce 1/2 a packet of rising agent for sweets
mezzo limone 1/2 lemon (later in recipe we learn it is to be lemon peel)
pizzico di sale pinch of salt
zucchero a velo vanigliato vanilla-flavored powdered sugar
To the best of my ability to understand Italian baking products, below we have the equivalent of what we call baking powder in the United States. Only here it comes in packets and I share with you now what I’ve learned the hard way thus far (see below the picture).
Read the recipe very carefully! Because when the recipe says to use “mezza bustina di lievito per dolce” then you want to use 1/2 a packet.
I know this now, because I missed that adjective when I was baking my ricotta torta, and I wound up with a product that was completely overpowered by the taste of baking powder. Which is a nice way to say the cake tasted awful and I had to throw the whole thing out.
Fortunately, I am very patient with myself when it comes to baking (very unlike how I am when it comes to learning to speak Italian!!). I was not very upset to bake a cake and throw it away. :-(
Whenever I bake, I like to play around with the ingredients somewhat, and I think almost every confection tastes better with vanilla. I am accustomed to using a vanilla bean in the United States, or a high quality vanilla extract. I haven’t been able to find that here yet, although I am certain it exists.
What I have found is this weird product:
It is a consistency somewhere between an extract and a paste, and seems to be filled with millions of vanilla seeds, and it imparts a decent vanilla flavor to whatever I’m mixing up.
In addition, the product below is widely available in the baking aisle. It is a white powdered version of what must be imitation vanilla? The package says it imparts the “aroma per dolci di vanillina” or the “aroma for sweets of vanilla extract.”
Well, it does smell like vanilla but to me it doesn’t add much in the way of flavor to my baking. I will stick to the above estratto until I can find real vanilla here.
So, I can’t show you my finished ricotta torta, because I didn’t photograph it before I dumped it. But here I include a picture of a torta margherita I successfully achieved a while back.
The picture says it all! It was wonderful!
Win some, lose some. Questa è la vita.
I won’t stop trying!! :-))
P.S. I’m going to try again to make the ricotta torta this weekend for a classmate’s birthday on Monday. Wish me luck! I am undeterred.
Facciamo cuocere una torta! A torta margherita is a traditional Italian cake. One of the most popular cakes in Italy, it was named after the country’s first Italian queen: Margherita di Savoia.
The first recorded recipe for the torta was in the 19th century, but it probably had been handed down from mother to daughter for centuries earlier.
I recently baked a yummy torta margherita from a box mix in my Florentine kitchen and next I wanted to try one from scratch. Here’s my guide.
If you want to try one too, here’s the modern recipe:
5 eggs
180 grams sugar
zest of a lemon to taste
150 grams flour
150 grams potato starch
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
vanilla, 1 Tablespoon I’m guessing
salt
80 grams melted butter, cooled
powdered sugar to sprinkle on top of baked cake
Beat eggs, sugar and zest of a lemon on high until you get a light mixture that looks like the example in the Youtube video. The mixture should be a pale yellow and hold its form enough that you can “write with it” as la signora says.
Next, with mixer on low, add flour and starch, baking powder, salt and vanilla. The vanilla in the video is a powdered form available in Italy. La signora reminds us to only mix the flours, etc., in; you don’t want to lose the lift you got by beating the eggs.
Last, slowly mix in the melted butter.
Pour mixture into a round baking tin, buttered, floured and lined with parchment paper. Bake at 180 degrees C. for 40 – 50 min. Sprinkle the cooled cake with powdered sugar.
It worked! My yummy cake looks like this:
And I eat it like this:
But, you want to make it without potato flour?
Since we, in our American kitchens, don’t typically have potato starch on hand, I believe it is possible to change the recipe slightly, by adding an additional 100 grams of 00 flour. Here’s another recipe I found on the internet for a Torta Margherita sensa fecola di patate. I haven’t tried it yet, but probably will soon.
Tempo di preparazione: 20 minuti, Tempo di cottura: 40 minuti, Tempo totale: 1 ora
Ingredienti per Torta Margherita senza fecola da 22 cm di diametro
250 g di farina 00)
200 g di zucchero
80 g di burro
4 uova
1 bustina di vanillina
1 bustina di lievito per dolci Paneangeli
120 ml di latte
zucchero a velo vanigliato q.b.
Buona fortuna!
Always on the search for history, I found the following article in the August 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine.
In every issue of BBC History Magazine, picture editor Sam Nott brings you a recipe from the past. In this article, Sam recreates Torta Margherita, a 19th-century cake from Italy that is both gluten and dairy-free.
This recipe comes from Pellegrino Artusi’s 1891 cookbook La Scienza in Cucina e l’Arte di Mangiare Bene (The Science of Cooking and the Art of Fine Dining), and is a cake that has been enjoyed in many Italian households.
Artusi’s introduction to his cookbook gives an insight into the origins of the cake. He originally made it for a friend of his, Antonio Mattei, who took the recipe and, after making a few changes, sold it in his restaurant.
The cake was such a success that it soon became the norm to finish a meal with Torta Margherita. The moral of the story, according to Artusi, is that if you grab opportunities when they arise (as Mattei did) fortune will favour you above someone who merely sits back and waits.
Ingredients
120g of potato starch, sifted
120g of fine white sugar (caster sugar)
4 eggs
Juice or zest of a lemon (optional)
Butter and baking paper (to line the baking tin)
Method
Separate the yolks from the whites and beat the yolks together with the sugar until pale and creamy. Add the lemon (optional) and the potato starch and beat.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then delicately fold the whites through the batter. Place the mixture into a round cake tin (buttered and lined with baking paper). Bake at a moderate heat for about an hour or until golden on top and firm to the touch.
Time: 60 minutes
Verdict:
When I found this recipe I was intrigued: a gluten and dairy-free cake that tastes nice? And with only three ingredients? But the picture in the recipe book looked very enticing so I gave it a try.
And I’m glad I did! I ended up making several of these as they were so delicious; friends and family devoured them all. The cake is incredibly light, goes well with tea or coffee, and takes just an hour to make.
And, alternatively, there is this: http://www.academiabarilla.com/italian-recipes/desserts-fruit/margherita-cake.aspx
Fireworks in my garden!
You’ll never regret any allium bulb you plant! I guarantee it!
Summertime, and the living is easy. Strawberries abound in the market. I think they are just asking me to make them into jam! Don’t you hear them calling?
Listen closely.
Cut the lovely scarlet berries up.
Put them in a large saucepan with a little water, some sugar to taste, a little splash of lemon juice, and pectin.
Bring the mixture to a rapid boil, lower heat, simmer until you think it looks right.
Looking good!
I call done!
Let the stawberry goodness cool down and then ladle it into canning jars. One jar done, 6 to go. Then into the freezer.
Tomorrow morning, and many tomorrows after, perhaps through the winter, this bright red yummy jam will be inhaled on wholegrain English muffins, toast, in yogurt and on ice cream. I just can’t wait!
Don’t you love summer?!
How I do love this season in my garden!
I adore peonies.
And every allium bulb I have ever planted has paid big beauty dividends the following springs. Every following spring. Perennials are a gardeners best friend.
But nothing pays dividends like the next allium blossom. It’s huge. For scale, here’s my hand beside it!
I love how this large firework blossom looks nestled in among another favorite perennial, various types of ?? (forgot name!!) with their variegated, heart-shaped leaves and blush pink to purple tender blossoms. I like it when the varieties mix it up and weave in and out between each other.
Who needs fireworks when you have a showstopper like this blossom?
Where’ve you been all my life?
Hello, peony! The June garden is exploding!
I think that gardeners are the most optimistic people you can ever meet. All that hope, in one tiny seed. Will it grow or won’t it?
get back, lauretta! 
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