One year on… | Un'anno dopo la rotonda

So it's been a year.

We arrived in Italy last November, having driven through France on a very quiet All Saints day, passing under Mont Blanc in our proud old Fiat Bravo.

The year has gone by quickly for me. Getting accustomed to life here was easy in some ways, difficult in others; but the seasons have flown by and it feels like only yesterday that we were sitting down for our first meal together in our 'new' home.

Not quite new - we moved in with my wife's parents. There are all sorts of jokes in both languages about this kind of situation, but the experience so far for me has been a positive one. I do have the advantage of being the first boy in the house for a while, my in-laws having had three daughters. Needless to say my instant popularity came with a few advantages. I won't go into all of them, but I'm in no danger of starvation…

One year on, I now feel that I can start to comment on what I'm seeing and hearing around me with a little perspective. My next few posts will, in the main, be dedicated to how I feel about Italy, Italians and life here in the Bel Casino.

In the meantime… buona giornata a tutto voi!

Booze update: Miyagawacino taste test, Brasiliero and fun with kiwis

It was a busy weekend in the booze lab. 

Yesterday we tried the first batch of Miyagawacino and on Saturday I bottled off my latest Brasiliero (coffee liqueur) and started off a Kiwi syrup. 

The Miyagawacino has turned out really nice and smooth. At just over 30% by volume it's lighter than it's 'parent' limoncino recipe - in fact, the freezer was turned up way too high so I found all the bottles frozen solid when it came time to pull one out. The taste is still quite lemon/lime but you definitely get mandarin when you take a sniff. I might make some every autumn...

The Brasilio is my second batch. The first turned out to be great for pouring over ice-cream, affogato-style; though it was too sweet and cloying for my taste. In with fresh ground coffee to macerate in the alcohol had gone a scraped-out vanilla pod and some lemon peel, as well as a 50/50 sugar syrup a week of vigorous shaking later. This latest batch goes easy on the vanilla, sugar and shaking and tasted much closer to what I want when I took a cheeky sip. Let's see how it matures in the bottle - I reckon it'll be very close to Tia Maria when it's ready. 

The kiwi syrup is a bit of an experiment. I'd started off a bottle of raspberry syrup ('Lampocchero') earlier this month by throwing 500g raspberries, sugar, lemon peel, some mint and basil leaves and alcohol into a bottle. The recipe said to leave in the sun for a week(!) but I'm committed to shaking it daily for five months before giving it a try. The kiwi bottle follows similar quantities and I'm hoping I end up with a pair of boozy syrups perfect for cocktail ingredients or the base of a Bellini variation next May. (Sticky) fingers crossed!

Salute!