Tineggiori Chickens . . . .

Chickens, Ducks and assorted poultry have always been a big part of our family life, in the UK we caused some raised eyebrows with some of our cross breeding experiments, we loved each and every one of them! 

We have a small number of brown hens that we bought at point of lay, they have settled in well and are producing lovely brown eggs which we fight over at breakfast time, we need to build our flock without delay!

Tilly and I built this rickety ladder which Hugh F-W assured us they would get the hang of (River Cottage Cook Book), no matter how many times we 'place' them on the ladder, they always fly/leap/jump into bed without giving our ladder a backward glance.

We managed to hatch just two of our Plymouth Rock eggs, our whole hatch was a bit of a disaster, with only five live chicks from 20 eggs, 18 of which were fertile and viable on day 21!

Not sure what happened but we will improve.

We also hatched three Robusta Maculata which are an Italian breed renowned for their tasty egg production.

These chickens will all be used for breeding our next generation of meat and laying birds, I think we will need to buy in more hatching eggs as so far, I think we may only have one cockerill

We have as usual defied all advice and named our chicks, real farmers say you should never name an animal you may intend to eat, it makes you attached apparently, well we get attached to all our animals, even the ones we eat. We love them all and until the day comes that we decide to go veggie, we would much rather eat an animal we have loved and reared in happy surroundings than blindly eat bought in meat without conscience just because we didn't 'know' it personally.

Our chicks are Bronson, Gino, Magneto, Banana and Alice

Tilly and Bronson watching TV

Much Love from Tineggiori xxx

A quick Sunday roundup

We've had a busy weekend here at Tineggiori, the weather has been a little bleak the last few days and we had a break in the weather today when the sun got out for a breather.  I spent a little time planting out some seeds, we have a lot of wild thyme and parsley here, which sounds wonderful but it spreads like you wouldn't believe!  Last year we planted seeds straight into the ground and found that a lot of them were over-run by the parsley before they could even break ground.

This year we decided to sow plants rather than seeds, it's an extra step but so far it's proved to be worth the extra work.

I use toilet roll holders as mini plant pots, providing they're stacked well in they hold up pretty well until they eventually go into the land with the seedling and compost down naturally.

I didn't grown any swede last year so I'm very excited to see if these grow ok in our Italian ground, I do hope so as I love these mashed up with sweet carrots and butter with my Sunday roast! 

Hope you had a great weekend and to my UK friends, enjoy your bank holiday!

Much Love from Tineggiori

xxx

Tineggiori Focaccia

Fresh Garlic is making it's way into the shops and markets and I grabbed some up yesterday just because I love it so much.

I hadn't planned our meal last night which is very unusual, I like the organisation of knowing in advance what to shop, harvest and cook for, I've planned my weekly menus for the last 25 years and I'm afraid I'm stuck with the habit.

I had a long day in front of the computer yesterday sorting out our facebook page and youtube channel, I try to make bread dough in the evening and leave it to prove overnight so it's ready to bake for breakfast, I doubled the ingredients and made a focaccia for tea, we ate it with some pasta, sausage and tomato sauce.

Recipe:

500g flour (strong bread flour in UK)
7g dried yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
approx 300ml warm water
1 glug olive oil

Topping:

1 onion, finely sliced
garlic to taste
coarse salt
few sprigs rosemary
sprinkling of parmesan

Method:

Add the dried yeast and sugar to the warm water, let stand for 10-15 minutes, stir.

Add the salt and flour to a big mixing bowl (I use my mixer with the dough hook for the tough bit), add the water slowly and mix to form a soft, slightly sticky dough.  All flours absorb liquid differently so you may have water left over but this is fine.

Knead the dough for 15 minutes.

Place in a bowl covered with a damp cloth or damp parchment paper and leave to rise for about 1 hour, longer if you're busy with something more exciting! 

Turn the dough out onto a board, knead again for 1 minute, now, roll, pull and stretch the dough to fit onto a large baking sheet, don't worry too much about this bit, size really doesn't matter, *sniggers childishly* you will end up with either a smaller, thicker base or a larger, thinner one.

Now poke your fingers and knuckles into the dough to make lovely little crevices that will create little pools of olive oil and herbs.  Add your toppings with as much gay abandon as you can cope with, as much or as little as you like, perhaps go a bit easy on the salt though.  I used a whole garlic bulb and added the cloves whole, fresh is a lot milder and turns very sweet when roasted with salt and olive oil, it also means that the couple of garlic wusses among us can pick it off without offending their taste buds!

Some will say you should leave the dough to prove again at this stage, I do myself sometimes, but last night I was in a hurry and baked it straight away at about 180°C for half an hour or until its golden brown.

Then all there is left to do is convince your family and friends that, yes, you really did make it yourself!

Much love from Tineggiori

xxx