Petitgrain in cooking

We have a few orange trees here in pots- they are terribly unhealthy here- it is a little too windy and cold in the winter for them to survive well. They produce very little if any fruit (or flowers) and when they do produce anything, it is very sour (more so than a Seville orange). But I was rubbing the leaves in my hand today and the smell was that wonderfully mineral smell, tinged with orange flower and green woodiness and a strong almost bay leaf-like depth.

We were eating a very good local pecorino cheese that had been wrapped in walnut leaves last night, and today I am wondering whether orange leaf would be even better... or perhaps used to make a chocolate orange sorbet... hmm... I think some experiments are needed although I wonder whether it could end up being too bitter....

Caper flowers

Growing in the walls around the castle are quite a few caper bushes- they survive on the smallest quantity of soil in the cracks between the stones. We collect the capers in June and July before they flower- then they go straight into salt to be preserved for the rest of the year.

Now I am not usually a fan of capers- I always thought of them as being incredibly bitter and mustard-like- a Puttanesca wouldn't be the same without them, so they have always a place in my heart.

However, recently when walking up from the office in the early morning or evening, there was a difficult to place floralcy in the air. I spent a long time sniffing one evening, and thought the smell was coming from the kitchen. Alas, it wasn't a puttanesca cooking, but the flowers of the caper bushes just out of site on the far side of the wall...

The flowers are hairy like a passion flower- white with purple tendril-like stamens- quite beautiful.

The caper flower does smell a lot like a caper cooking in a sauce: mustardy, only without the green (that seems to come from biting into a caper) and intensely gourmand. At first when I made the discovery, I was surprised that I hadn't heard of a caper flower scent being made, but after a while, I realised that it would be too much...

The beetles that pollinate the flowers are huge and made wonder more about what pollinates what. I recently read this article on the Belly Flowers blog that has set me wondering about what pollinates the vines- I always thought it was bees, but perhaps I was wrong...

A Whine about Wine and the reasons for this blog

I should have known better- moving to Italy was a breeze, my sister and I are working together very well and we are yet to have an argument but it comes at a cost...

We make wine here.  My love of wearing fragrances has been causing a few problems when it comes to our wine tastings as a scent can distract from the tasting. In fact, we often remind people not to wear anything when they come...

So I haven't been wearing as much as I used to and funnily enough I have begun to notice other smells- whether it be the sulphur used in the vineyard, the caper flowers on the walls of the castle, the "porcupine" or the wonderful night air coming down from Monte Amiata behind us...

I thought I would use this space to write about those smells, and maybe the odd other smell, but always the scent of Tuscany.....