Market Day in Milan

Call it bad timing, but on the morning of the day we flew home from Milan this market popped up on the street opposite our apartment. It snaked through several streets selling fruit and vegetables of all kinds. You want courgette? Take your pick from a bounty of varieties; dark green, light green, yellow or striped. There were tomatoes of every size and shade of red through to orange, yellow and purple. There were mountains of oranges and citrus fruit sold as cheap as chips, just crying out to be made into marmalade. If only we could have stayed a little longer. I would have filled my boots. I did however fill my hand luggage with blood oranges, lemons and podded peas, which were the kids Milan snack of choice.

Milano

 

 

April is Milan month for us. We David goes out there for work: the spectacular Milan Furniture Fair - a must for anyone in our industry. It's like 'Fashion Week' for furniture and it sprawls the city with design districts here, there and everywhere to explore. 

However when we do Milan, we do it en famille, so I see very little of the design as I have the kids to amuse. I bribe them with Gelato in order to take in a couple of design shows, but really I have to except that kids and work don't really mix. So David does his things for a few days and nights and we do ours. Then we have 24 or 48hrs together before we head home.

It works though. I miss out on the champagne parties that David goes to in the evenings, but then he has very tired feet and is pretty much furnitured-out by the end of it all.

We are so extremely lucky to have friends living in the city at the moment so get to stay in their beautiful Milanese apartment which is as central as you can get. The sun came out in Milan. It felt like early summer. 

We did Sempione Park and Giardini Pubblici; the Design Museum and the Natural History Museum; we rode the metro and the tram; we shopped at the local supermarket, became familiar faces at the local patisserie and purused the food market on our doorstep on the Saturday morning; we ate deli salads in the park, olives, italian cheese, stuffed courgette flowers, orecchiette con broccoli and had the best ever Tiramisu at Refettorio Simplicitas. 

Despite being in the middle of a busy city, it was an incredibly relaxing time: a chance to step away from the day-to-day stuff and just be with the kids with the whole day stretched before us and all that different flavoured gelato to work our way through. Heaven.

Aunties, Lemon Drizzle Cake & The Kinfolk Table

If anything brings out a traditional English cake in me, it's a visit from the Aunties. I've written about their visits on the blog before, here and here. Today they made their Easter visit to us: the kid's were spoilt; we took a walk along the beach; we had sandwiches & cake and drank copious cups of tea. 

I returned home from our Milan trip at the weekend with two lemons. They were each double the size of the ones available here. I had placed them in the fruit bowl, enjoying their rustic imperfections with  a sketchy plan to use them in a recipe in which they could take centre stage. Their moment of glory came today in the form of a Lemon Drizzle Cake.

I've baked countless Lemon Drizzle cakes, but for this occasion I decided to follow a new recipe. It did my Milanese lemons proud - a zesty lemony cake that's best enjoyed in the company of aunties. You can find the said recipe in The Kinfolk Table. This book is my bible. It is so beautifully written with stunning photography - it's a book that I get totally absorbed and lost in and a book I re-read over and over again.

Written by author Nathan Williams, who also edits the equally beautiful Kinfolk Magazine, The Kinfolk Table is a collection of recipes that Williams has gathered from a wide-ranging circle of home cooks around the world who are both reinventing and rediscovering the joys of casual entertaining. Williams takes the reader into the home of each of the contributors - chefs, bakers, writers, bloggers, artisans and artists - capturing what makes them each remarkable, and drawing out the rituals and traditions that bring loved ones to share their table. 

To me, it beautifully sums up what cooking, eating and sharing food is all about: those everyday rituals and sometimes-occasions that are the backbone of life.

Milan, You Were Really Something

 

It's now day two back at home since our trip, yet my head in still in Milan. I'm not quite back to reality just yet. It was a wonderful city; one that we only had a quick taste of, but wow it certainly delivered all the expectations we went out there with. It was charming, elegant, stylish and full of history. Those shutters and ornate balconies gave even the most unremarkable streets character and history. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, we were staying at an apartment that belongs to friends who were out of the country. The apartment was stunning: it wouldn't have looked out of place in Elle Decor Italia magazine. It was vast and included, much to Lily and Arthur's delight, a playroom complete with an extensive children's DVD library. The living room had three floor-to-ceiling windows that opened out onto balconies from which we could people watch down on the street below (we were on the 3rd floor). We were well and truly in the thick of the city: the best place to be.

For the first few days, David was working during the day and evening time at the various design events dotted around the city. All was productive and enjoyable. So during those days the kids and I stayed local, finding our feet (and the local bakers and ice cream parlour). The food was a highlight for me. The breads were amazing: perfect ciabatta, wonderful cheese stuffed focaccia and the best pizza. The local supermarket was really something too - I've never seen such an array of fresh vegetables and there were two aisles dedicated to cheese alone. It wasn't a specialist or expensive shop, just the local supermarket. I just wanted to stay longer so I could continue to shop and cook.

The only tainted part of our trip was when Arthur came down with a sudden sickness bug (we were in the Science Museum at the time!). He was quite poorly for a couple of days so we were apartment bound. It was little frustrating as it meant we couldn't see all we had planned to, but he shook it off quickly and was back in the ice cream parlour before our trip was out. Below are a few snaps of our trip. They're pretty random, due to the fact that I forgot to take my camera battery charger (or spare battery) and it ran out of juice on day two. So the phone camera had to step in and do its best. If you ever get the chance to visit this beautiful city, grab it with both hands.

Next Week: Milan.

We're off to Milan next week for seven days. I'm feeling quite excited, if a little unprepared. We only decided to go a couple of months ago. Normally, any trips we take are booked well in advance. The main reason for this trip is work. Milan is home to the world's biggest furniture fair, Salone Internazionale del Mobile - think a kind of 'Milan Fashion Week' for furniture and interiors. As well as the main event, there are countless satellite events throughout the cities various districts. 

It is our first trip to Milan, indeed our first trip to Italy. We toyed with making the trip alone, which would obviously make 'business' sense. We toyed with David making the trip on his own, while I stayed behind with the kids. To be honest I wasn't overly comfortable or happy with either option. The decision we finally settled upon was for us both to go with the kids in toe. This means that I won't really be able to do the business stuff. David will spend the first 48hrs of our trip attending the exhibitions and events during the day and the launch parties in the evenings. Once work has had its 48hrs or so, we can do stuff as a family. 

The real coup of this trip is that we're going to staying at my friend Sarah's city centre apartment. She moved to Milan with her husband and two young daughters just over a year ago, due to her husbands job. Since settling in her new city, Sarah has given us an open invite to visit. We all knew that the ideal time for our visit would be now. But, would you believe this; we will only see Sarah for a mere morning as she is coming back to the UK for her sisters wedding and will return to Milan the day after we leave. What bad timing! 

So, while David hangs out with the design world's movers and shakers in chic city spots, I will be exploring what cultural treats the city has to offer with Lily, Arthur, my terrible sense of direction and Sarah's recommendations. I speak no Italian, but am pretty good and communicating with gesture and expression, which will hopefully be enough to get us by. We will jump on the metro or travel by tram and get 'inside' the city. Lily wants to find the best Pesto Pasta and Arthur will be more than happy to try out the ice cream parlours. I just want to visit the food and flea markets, shop in the supermarket and people watch from an outdoor cafe, cappuccino in hand. As for the evenings, I'll happily give the swanky parties and bars a miss for a glass of wine on my friends couch reading through the pile of books that I will take with me. I'm happy with the simple life whichever city I happen to be in.

No doubt, I will come home with something to share on the blog, but until then, Ciao. x