Zimmer: Panforte di Siena & Some Fresh Sea Air....

20

Amelia woke as per usual with her 7a.m. alarm clock. Later that morning she was going to the Three Sisters with her dear friend, Tal. It was a beach walk with three rock formations, while they were planning to picnic at the final rock formation. She had perused Bellamy’s cookbook for something special to serve for a little sweetness and sustenance and had found an Italian cake that sounded too good to resist.

Panforte di Siena

An Italian confection that my Nonna was famous for, this particular delectable treat is a cross between a fruitcake, candy and honey cakes. With only just a little flour to hold it all together, the name ‘panforte’ means ‘strong bread’ due to its potent spicy flavour. In Italy, it is also known as Siena cake. Originally a traditional Christmas pastry, panforte is now thoroughly enjoyed all year round by enthusiasts of Italian cuisine.

A speciality of Siena, its origins date all the way back to the 13th century, when the first documents, among them Siena’s historic papers, of various testimonies were dated from 1205 and written on parchment paper. The parchment was first discovered in the mid 1800’s in the archives of the hospital of Siena. It had come from the estate of the Castle of Montisi which belonged to the Cacciaconti family and was written that, on that particular date, the servants and inhabitants of the monastery of Montecellesi (now Montecelso) were obliged to present the nuns with a generous bounty of bread with pepper and honey by way of a form of tax.

Later it evolved to more closely resemble the cake we know today, and in the archives of Genoa, it was recorded that panforte was one of the most renowned and celebrated of sweets in Italy. It soon crossed over the boundaries of Siena and was recorded as featuring prominently on many a menu of the feasts of wealthy noblemen in just about every part of Italy. So who needs Christmas, to indulge in this particular delicacy... When the occasion calls for any celebration, I say celebrate in style with a slice or two of panforte!

Amelia went over the ingredients, making a list of all she need when she popped into town that morning. Though it was a cake that could serve twelve in thin slices, Amelia planned to visit the professor and take him some, along with Renate at her boutique once they’d had their walk on the beach shore.

115g of split almonds

115g of hazelnuts

75g of mixed peel

50g of dried apricots

50g of glacé pineapple

Grated rind of one large orange

50g of plain flour

2 tablespoons of cocoa powder

2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon

115g of caster sugar

175g of clear honey

Icing sugar, for dredging

Having returned home, Amelia began baking. She toasted the almonds under the grill until golden brown and placed them in a bowl. She toasted the hazelnuts until the skins split and placed them on a dry tea towel and rubbed off their skins. Next, she roughly chopped the nuts with the mixed peel. Chopping the apricots and the pineapple finely, she added them to the nuts and orange rind and made sure to mix well.

Sifting the flour with the cocoa powder and cinnamon, she added the nutty jumble and combined evenly. She lined a round cake tin with baking parchment. Then she put the honey and the sugar into a saucepan and heated it on her gas stovetop until the sugar had dissolved. As per the recipe’s instruction, she continued to boil the sugar and honey for about 5 minutes further, until it thickened and began to turn a deeper shade of brown.

Finally, she added it to the nut mixture and stirred it all in, turning it into the prepared tin and levelling the top with the back of a damp spoon. The oven had been set for 150C and the cake would need one hour to bake before heavily dredging it in the icing sugar, all ready for the picnic with Tal.

Feeling suddenly peckish, she put the espresso maker on the stovetop to boil and dished herself up the last slice of her ginger and pear cake. What a life she had, she had to congratulate herself, with cake for breakfast!

Her espresso poured, she took up a seat at the patio table in her courtyard and had to agree that it was a resplendently breathless and beautiful Spring day for the beach. She couldn’t remember when last she had been to the beach. They had gone so very frequently when she was a child, with her mother, Georgina Young, a firm fiend for the ocean. Cake and espresso finished and nigh on 10 o’clock when Tal would be arriving, Amelia took it as her cue to quickly shower and get dressed. Deciding it the kind of day to be truly laidback, she placed her old Pixies fan shirt and a pair of old denim shorts on the bed for changing into after she’d freshened up.

Tal arrived a little early at ten to ten, and she fixed him up with an espresso while they waited on the cake for another couple of minutes. Tal was in his Yoda shirt again and a pair of baggy camo shorts, his feet utterly free and shoeless as always.

“Smells heavenly,” Tal complimented her, taking in a whiff of the warm cinnamon baking away. “Amelia, you truly do always out do yourself. Lucky that we get to relish in your cooking!”

“Funny, but it’s no trouble, honestly. I really love it. When you’re an editor the task seems never quite done or quite perfect enough and there’s a peculiar and unsettling intangibility to the work you do, but when you cook or bake, it’s something you’ve created as if out of nothing into something nourishing and soul satisfying. So please, don’t flatter me too much. A lot of this is a purely selfish endeavour I can assure you.”

“I know what you mean, for me it is the same with my carpentry or when I tend to the gardens at the backpackers. I don’t think I’ve ever told you, but for many years, I studied theology. But there was always a restlessness in me, a void, that I couldn’t quite reach to its very depths, an itch that always needed scratching. In the end, I found the presence of something greater than me in these seemingly innocuous tasks like making a dinner table or a little stool, or in seeing a plant come out in blossoms for the very first time. In applying myself to a kind of pursuit for simple perfection in the everyday and mundane. And my restlessness finally settled. Isn’t life so very strange but wonderful at the same time?” Amelia nodded her head in rapt contemplation, offering Tal a gentle and reassuring smile, that she understood only far too well what he meant.

And with that, Amelia checked on the cake and made the final touches before wrapping it in a clean muslin cloth with a side of homemade lemonade in a rucksack, with a serrated knife with a rounded end for cutting and a couple of tumblers.

They had passed the first two rock formations, sweating some in the blazing sunshine as midday began to approach. The seabirds out and about going about their day, from gulls to oyster catchers with their bright orange beaks, the waters sparkling iridescently.

Amelia’s carry bag was already quite full with the seashells that she’d been collecting for a large glass jar in her home on her coffee table. Tal, ever the unassuming gentlemen, had offered to wear the rucksack of panforte and lemonade on his back.

An hour into their leisurely stroll on the sandy shore and they arrived at the third Sister and rock formation. Bending low to climb underneath the rocks, they found a private beach all their own, with the waves rushing in and out from the gully, though it was still low tide.

Amelia unfolded a large towel for them to sit on while Tal removed the contents of the rucksack and laid out the spread she’d prepared. Amelia began to go through the collection of seashells she’d accumulated on their walk.

“You know, I was such a strange little thing as a young girl. My mother took us to the beach so often and I would collect any shimmering shell I could find, like a magpie drawn to anything that shined. At home, I would place the shells in a bucket of salty water to get their shine back and I would make them characters in a play, usually of a royal court. Some would be kings, some queens. The ones that I found the prettiest would be the young princess, the odd ones the court jesters... And so I would delight myself merrily for hours on end.

“My mother, however, was far more the pragmatic sort in her own way. Oyster shells made for fine ashtrays for the rollies she smoked. And sea sponges she used to create textured patterns when painting the walls of our home, whenever she was in the mood for a change.

“She was relentless that way, growing easily bored and constantly moving furniture around and renovating all but a few spaces like the bathroom that she’d tiled by hand in glorious Art Deco fashion in vibrant green tiles with accents of white and black.

“And then there was the matter of the lion clawed bathtub that she’d lovingly restored and picked up for a steal at a junk yard. And our basin, with a copper tap and the most exquisite sculpture of a pale green, mottled octopus around its rim. That was one room she seemed contented with and never touched unlike the rest of our house.

“I was so fortunate you know, to grow up amidst so much splendour. And my nana’s home too, in its own unique way, everything so very larger than life in its childlike excess. A woman who was always so playful and young at heart, my Nana.

“Sadly, it took me far too long to realise how much I was missing in my own life, how very far the apple had dropped from the tree when it came to the women before me. And their bold, unflinching spirits....” Amelia drifted off, the blue of the ocean bringing back a flood of memories, and embarrassed to have gotten so lost in them all in front of Tal.

“You know,” Tal interrupted her. “There is an olive tree in Italy that is hundreds of years old and still produces olives to this day. We judge time as if it is a blink of an eye and find ourselves so very forlorn if we feel we have failed to make the most of it, judging ourselves by superfluous increments in our life, such haphazard increments that are supposed to determine our successes or lack thereof.

“But nature is not so. A lemon tree won’t bear fruit just because you want it to. You cannot will nature thus. It demands its own time and so trees bear us fruit when they are good and ready and not a moment sooner. A flower blossoms only when the circumstances are just the way they need, and not a moment sooner.

“So don’t be so harsh on yourself. Look at me, years of theology and following one path so very fervently and with such youthful single mindedness and determination, only to become a drifter and humble carpenter and jack of all trades and I dare say, master of so very few.

“When you’re ready to bear fruit, you will. And look at what strides you have taken already. You, my dear Amelia, are an inspiration to us all and a fine friend indeed and what could mean anything more in this life than that?”

“Thank you, Tal. That means a great deal. More than you could imagine.” Amelia paused and took a sip of her lemonade, the tangy sweetness strengthening her some.

For a time, the two sat in comfortable silence, simply observing the waves filling the gully before receding again out into the vast ocean beyond. There was a stupefying magnitude to it all that left both enraptured by the sheer force of the wild and untamed.

Then Amelia, turning to reaching for a slice of cake, came face to face with a wild mouse, drawn out by the prospect of nibble or two, nearing ever closer to the faded beach towel but uncertain if it should dare it. She quietly motioned to Tal, who simply smiled and broke off a piece of the cake, tossing it to where the mouse sat, waiting in eager anticipation.

Quickly, the mouse grabbed the small peace offering and disappeared once more underneath a rock. This happened again and again until the mouse, perhaps satiated, disappeared for good and the two of them returned their gaze to the ocean beyond.

Tal was the first to break the silence, but quietly, as if in reverence for all around them.

“The professor turned me onto the most amazing writer, well, a leading bryologist and studier of mosses, but a writer nonetheless too. Robin Wall Kimmerer. She writes that in the natural heritage she shares with the Bear Clan of Potawatomi, they speak of nature in such a way that forever recognises every piece of it as indelibly alive and vital, a world of talking trees, and dancing bees, and birds who make art and people with leaves. In her native Ashinaabe language they address every bit of nature with the word ‘Bemaadiziiaaki’ as a kindling for all things wildling.

“However, of course, she gathers this might be a bit of a tall order for Western tongues and so she proposes instead ‘ki’, and ‘kin’ for the collective of a flock of birds, say. So that we may truly begin to feel that we belong in nature, that our soul recognises the thriving life force and soul that is say, that rock over there, covered as it is in a myriad of life forms and an ecosystem all unto itself. Isn’t that just marvellous? I am ‘ki’, you are ‘ki’, our dear visitor, the mouse, is ‘ki’...”

“I like that a great deal,” Amelia spoke, staring far off into the distance. She thought on Ailuros and how much the feline had changed her life. Ki. Two lost souls who had found each and created a home together. A place to belong. For wasn’t that what we all wanted in life... Wasn’t that what the word ‘Zimmer’ had meant to her all along... To belong? A kindling for all things wildling... And a space to truly feel your own, at one with all of nature’s bounty.

She pecked Tal on the cheek. To thank him for being him and they sat once more in contented silence until it was time to return to city life, but different somehow, this time around, a shift in her very being, even in the way she considered the darling cat that had made of Amelia her mistress.

I am the luckiest, she concluded, picking Ailuros up in her arms, for they were home. Ki. And kin.

Dances with Waves by Eva Volf