
Autumn Leaves
Living in Italy we eat very seasonally: it’s taken us a while to fully get used to the fact that you just can’t eat tomatoes in the winter or broccoli in the summer, but because of this, when the season changes we look forward to the arrival of new flavours hugely. Naturally the most highly anticipated autumn ingredient is new season freshly pressed olio nuovo, which brings life to the pumpkin, cavolo nero, root vegetables and mushrooms that we are currently enjoying.
Our relocation from the 24/7 society, always on, buy what what you want when you want has been an interesting experience which has forced us to really understand the seasons, what we like to eat, and the changing climate. Oranges and citruses for examples are fruit we have grown accustomed to assume are always there. But since our friends at Tenute Librandi sent us a case of just picked Calabrian oranges, the experience of the taste remained with us, and now we know we have to patiently wait for the winter to appreciate really good oranges.
So we transition from summer, where tomatoes, zucchini, peaches and melon seem to colour all our dishes, to the rougher, rustic flavours of the autumn. As we witness our climate change dramatically fast, and see our friends who grow olives and grapes having to continually adjust to the effects of this change, maybe it is our responsibility to be less demanding of our planet and continue to understand and appreciate seasonality.