April | 2025 | Englishman in Italy

To say I am gutted is an understatement. Today I was supposed to sign to purchase our new house. The champagne was chilling in the fridge. I had taken time off from work so that I could spend time with our builder and Fräulein to look at the house and put the plans together to bring it back to life. Yesterday the estate agent copied me in an email saying the signing has to be postponed because one of the old dears who is selling the house is in hospital and they are waiting for her to be discharged (or to say goodbye to this world). I don’t normally swear in my blog but. oh bugger!

I shouldn’t really be surprised after all this is Italy.

January I fell in love with an old house in the countryside, the house is a 35 minute drive from our little house in our cute village. I persuaded Fräulein to come and have a look at it, even though we haven’t finished decorating this house. There are a couple of things that need to be said about this new house, first, it is beautiful, second, it is huge and third, parts of the house date from the 1800s.

Fräulein and I made a life change about three years ago when we started to look after houses for Americans and stopped teaching English to sticky horrible Italian children. This progressed after we organised for a roof to be repaired at one house, then a kitchen fitted in another house and now we project manage complete house restructuring. We even have a website Greytek

While searching for a home for a client, I dropped upon this house, it didn’t suit their requirements, for example they actually wanted a kitchen and a bathroom and this house only has one cold water tap and a sink.. But I love it and it has great potential.

The house might not have a bathroom (there is a toilet in the garden) but is has a huge garden, I have managed to persuade Fräulein that I need a red tractor to mow the acre and a half of garden. Next we will argue over who gets to drive it.

Anyway, the price they wanted for the house and land was more than we wanted to pay so we haggled and managed to drop the price by 35%.

I thought it might be interesting over the coming months to add a few blogs of the purchase process of buying this house, and no doubt the tears and swearing that will happen as we restructure the house and finally instal a toilet and kitchen in the house.

The new date for signing the house purchase deeds is next Wednesday so don’t hold your breath.

Fräulein is going to buy some nice soft loo roll for the toilet and a place to put some newspapers and magazines..

Oh! I need some help thinking of a name for this house. Pecora’s Folly might not be appropriate, so start thinking and bounce me some ideas over.

Yesterday morning I woke up to a fabulous English breakfast with real bacon that we smuggled over from the UK. In Italy, black truffles are prized and command crazy prices, in our house bacon is prized above all else. When we have a power cut due to storms, my first thoughts go to the bacon in the freezer.

As I am pretty adept at burning food, Fräulein is normally in charge of the kitchen and she can prepare Asian and European cuisine. Last night we were expecting some friends over for dinner and I, after a couple of glasses of wine suggested I could cook risotto. After all I do have some experience at cooking risotto, in 2016 I did cook king prawn and asparagus risotto.

In the local supermarket I set Fräulein the task of buying the usual shopping whilst I went in search of ingredients for the risotto. In the pasta aisle I accosted a woman and using my fabulous linguistic abilities I asked her some questions.

Me, in broken Italian holding up a packet of rice: Is best for risotto?

Italian woman: No, this packet of rice is much better.

Me, holding up a kilo of rice: enough for 4 friends?

Italian woman laughing, more than enough, 100 grams is enough for one person.

The best rice for risotto, according to Maria

At home and checking my ingredients, I noticed I had forgot to buy an onion a very important item! The problem was solved by asking Fräulein to scrounge one from Doris our neighbour, Can you imagine an Italian called Doris!!

So here is my recipe.

Difficulty

Possible with the help of several glasses of wine. Oh and Carmen.

Preparation time

30 minutes

Cooking time

30 minutes

Serves

Ingredients:
200 grams of fresh salmon.

200 grams of fresh asparagus

400 grams of Carnaroli rice (Arborio is ok too if you cannot find Carnaroli)

1 Large onion, very important, don’t forget it.

1 Crushed clove garlic

1 bottle of dry white wine chilled.

2 glasses of dry white wine room temperature.

1 litre of vegetable stock. I used a stock cube with a couple of asparagus spears.

1.5 litres of boiling water

1 Bunch of parsley ( I also forgot this)

2 Big knobs of butter

1 tablespoon of creamy cheese.

Salt

Pepper

Specialist Equipment

2 Sauce pans

Large shallow pan, better if stainless steel

Chopping board

Sharp knife

Wooden spoon

Big ladle

Medium wine glass

How to cook:
1) Open the chilled wine and pour yourself a glass. I find this aids cooking.

2) Add stock cube, 2 asparagus spears and 1 litre of water into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Or be super clever and make your own vegetable stock.

3) Pour a glass of wine and a glass of water into a saucepan and 2 asparagus and when it has started simmering, add the salmon. Poach for about 8 minutes. Then remove salmon and put to one side.

4) Wash and cut the asparagus into 2 cm pieces, discard the ends of the asparagus because if it is ‘woody’ they will remain hard. Simmer for 3 to 5 mins. Then put to one side.

5) Peel onion and slice into little pieces and crush one garlic.,

6) Melt knob of butter into frying pan, the larger the better; pan fry the onion until just soft, try not to burn it, add rice and toast it for a few minutes. Throw in glass of room tempreture wine.

7) When wine has vaporized, add a ladle of stock whilst it’s still boiling, obviously. Stir with a wooden spoon on minimum fire until the liquid has been absorbed. Repeat the action for around 10 – 12 minutes.

You must keep stirring the rice and adding more stock as it is adsorbed.

8) Throw salmon and asparagus into the rice and repeat step 7 until you think rice is completely cook. I keep tasting the rice from time to time and when that failed I called in Carmen and asked her advice, she suggested more stock and another 5 mins. This solved the problem

9) Away from the fire mix knob of butter and cheese into risotto, stir energetically, add salt if required and serve sprinkling fresh parsley, black pepper and some more cheese on top.