Making Cookies in Italy: Garden First, then Find Pine Nuts

Written Sunday, April 10, 2011.

Tony shows me around the garden.Our "apartment"
is in the tall building in the background.

My second suitcase arrived with my gardening clothes and cookie making equipment on Thursday, three days late, after missing the connection in Amsterdam to Rome. (See my April 1 post about how I found myself as a gardener in residence in Civita.) I was reluctant to wear my city shoes into the garden, but the fact was that I had work to do, so city shoes and clothes have been sacrificed. I know this is a cookie making blog, but sometimes cookies have to be set aside.

I am here to help an architect care for the garden that helps feed academic fellows who come to this small architecture institute. Tony, the architect on site, has been working this garden for years, and I am careful to ask his preferences:

• Which tasks to prioritize: Besides weeding and planting, Tony wants a culinary bay leaf hedge trimmed (grows like a weed), and a gravel path sifted of dirt and weeds. These are yet to do.
• When to plant seeds: We are waiting for the full moon on the 17th.
• How he wants me to mulch and compost: He has no official compost pile, so I suggested spreading partly composted weeds into the beds, and he showed me how to throw woody vines over the garden wall to the chestnut grove 150 meters (about 500 feet) below.

Pruning the quince.

I am fortunate that some institute members visited earlier this year and got a head start on the planting. Fava beans, peas, spinach, radishes and parsley are in and up. Artichokes have been there a while, and need some organic fertilizer. Asparagus are new perennials in this garden. I find them so delightful, springing up from day to day, that I will plant some in my garden as soon as I return home.

For the past week, I have weeded, planted lettuce, weeded, pruned an aging quince tree, weeded, and dug a trench for a plastic barrier to contain the aggressive mint (same as in Seattle). I helped trim blackberry brambles (again, as in Seattle), and fine-pruned a 30-year-old potted evergreen shrub that Tony calls a juniper and looks very much like an open-spreading yew.


My husband Doug and I stay in a refurbished apartment made of local tufa stone.

This is our "home" in Civita.

I have been in the kitchen a lot, but to make dinners, not cookies. Sitting in the corner of the kitchen are the equipment that arrived in my second bag: a spare cookie sheet, parchment paper, cinnamon, almond paste, sesame seeds, a pastry bag, baking soda and baking powder. I had it on good authority from a friend who lives in Italy that Italian baking powder comes with a vanilla flavoring added. She had me bring her some of the real American kind a few years ago when I visited Venice, which is near her home.

My first quest was to find pine nuts. I could have brought some from my Costco stash at home, but that would be one of those coals to Newcastle moments that I couldn't abide. Shouldn't I be able to buy pignoli anywhere in Italy?

In spite of my so-so Italian, far superior to Doug's, I was not the one to find them. Doug approached a man in the Orvieto Saturday market who had sacks of nuts for sale. (How else can you say this?) Doug inquired, "Pignoli?"

One minute and 5 Euro later, Doug showed me the small bag of pine nuts he'd purchased at a rate of about $35 per pound. It only takes one Italian word to get ripped off in the market.

I should have brought some from Costco, I thought to myself, but only until I tasted a couple. The Italian pine nuts were ever more subtle and floral than those imported from China. If only they lend their special flavor to my cookies.