Author: Mara L.

Friday, it turns out, is the weekly farmers market here in the village where I’m staying. The very first stall, selling just a few items, had such nice produce that I didn’t get much further. So it was arugula for salad and mushrooms for pasta, beautiful, fresh, and spotless. Another stall I loved was selling farmers cheese. I’ve become weary of mozzarella di bufala, after reading up on the gruesome conditions in which the animals are kept. What used to be an almost unknown speciality is now a staple, available in every supermarket. And the conditions for production seem to have gone downhill dramatically. Rather than being a purist about the cheese being from Campania or the Maremma, I’ve come to be a purist about how the mozzarella is produced. So I liked the thought of mozzarella di bufala made by an organic farm in Bavaria. Here’s then the salad that started off today’s meal.

Spaghetti ai funghi are just as easy to prepare. Like with all mushrooms, don’t overdo the cleaning. Dry the mushrooms after cleaning on kitchen paper. Cut nicely and put them into a pan side-by-side. The less they are sitting on top of each other, the better.

Make sure not to stir the sliced mushrooms before they are seriously browning in the pan, add some cream and lemon and white wine.

Cook the spaghetti until they are al dente, or rather, very much al dente, still a tiny bit too hard. You’ll want to mix them in with the sauce, and as they soak up the sauce they are growing just a notch softer. As always, add parsley late: you don’t want it cooked, you want it pretty much raw mixed in with the rest.

My Risotto ai Funghi was a warm-up dish. Encouraged by the lovely groceries here, I decided to cook some game. I asked the butcher in the village whether she has any, and this is what she came up with: bistecca di cervo, of such nice quality that I almost want to call it a filetto di cervo. She also sold us a jar with delicious Scandinavian cranberries. The more sour-sweet side dishes the better, I thought. So in addition to the berries I wanted apples for apple sauce. The lady who runs the flower-and-fruit stall right next to the butcher sells farmers apples that looks rather different from anything I’ve seen in a while. Smallish, fragrant smell, greenish-red, called Topaz. I bought some, together with tiny potatoes, and started my dish by peeling the apples and cooking apple sauce.

I quite dislike the word apple sauce, because it suggests that what you’re aiming for is a sauce. But as I see it, what you’re aiming for isn’t cooked quite that much. There should be bite-sized bits of apple that are still “al dente.” So the good news is that once you’re done peeling, making apple sauce is a matter of minutes. With these lovely apples, all I needed was a tiny bit of sugar, a sip of white wine, and the juice of one lemon. Voila, the first bit of the dish is done. Now the potatoes, little beauties that didn’t need peeling.

I placed them in a pan, letting them sear for a while, with the lid on and off. You don’t want them to burn, hence the lid. But you don’t want there to be too much moisture either, otherwise they’re not browning, hence the lid can’t be on the pot all the time. Again, the trick is that you resist stirring the pot until they are nicely roasted on one side.

And now the venison. The meat looked so fresh and fine that I just put it in olive oil, with salt and pepper. I seared the steaks until browned a bit and then I let them sit in the pan while serving a tiny plate of salad.

Finally, all ingredients go on a plate, the cranberries on top of the venison. Hope you think it looks tasty!

The cooking stars align: I have a well-equipped kitchen at my disposal, no one else competes for the role of chef, and little stores nearby sell first-rate groceries from local farmers. It took me a few days to realize how much of an opportunity this is. Then I asked Jens whether he can be around for a bit and photograph what I’m cooking. So here we go, risotto with chanterelle mushrooms (in Italian: gallinacci, cantarelli, galletti) goes first.

The trick to preparing them well is to wash them carefully, dry them on kitchen paper, and to resist the urge to turn them around while you’re sautéing them—not forever, but almost for longer than feels right. You’ll need them nicely golden on one side before you turn them, and ideally you turn them individually. Only then you add salt and pepper along with sage and thyme and parsley.

The risotto is otherwise really simple. I was heating the rice in olive oil with some shallots and carrots, using a bit of left over red wine for added aroma. I’m not a terribly traditional risotto chef. I’m using a lot less butter than others say one should, just a tiny bit at the end when I’m adding also parmigiano. Most of the mushrooms go into the rice a minute or so before it’s all done. The rest—ideally, some especially pretty ones—are placed on top when you’re serving.