A Variant of the classical "Mare e Monti" theme.

"Fagioli del Purgatorio" are the small beans from Gradoli with an elegant taste. Moscardini are  very small Octopus,  but sepia would be good also, but no calamari or polpo verace.

The beans are boiled with a clove of garlic until tender. In the meantime you may steam  Moscardini (or smaller octopus),

I have many things in common with Maria Luisa Scolastra. If she publishes a recipe it is a cooking story. Hardly any one who tries to follow,  will get the same result. I share her love for "guanciale", pig cheeks, the essential ingredient for Umbrian cooking. Despite of having ample use of "guanciale",  she does not disdain the generous use of Extra quality olive oil and good butter.

Potato Mash gets a twist mixing it with veggies!

This dish is born from my experiments with pigeons. I like the Umbrian way of cooking  a pigeon, but sometimes I really want the pigeon breast red to savor all its flavors.  So I get several parts of the pigeon: the breast, the legs, many little pieces of meat and all the bones.

I am now the 3rd day confined in my Umbrian Countryhouse "Buon Respiro". I am anything else than  bored! Between finishing David Sinclair's exciting book on aging,  reading finally an entire version of the Economist, running, exercising, writing about cooking, I still come only after 7 pm into the kitchen.  But it is the joy of the day.  The menu was simple:

It is difficult to prepare authentic Chinese cuisine in the Umbrian country side. The main ingredients are available, but many "accessories" are not,

I could get Tofu, minced pork meat. I had garlic, Sichuan pepper,  Ginger. I did not    have "salted fermented beans" or Sichuan Pickles.

(this has been published at https://medium.com/@johannes.keizer/first-corona-virus-confinement-dinn…)

This was Tris of Carpaccio. 

Raw Salted Codfish (Baccalà) was bought at the local COOP supermarket and watered two days.   Two types of  Coregone , a) marinated by the Fishermen from Bolsena Village and b) fresh fillets of  Coregone, which I marinated. 

Inspiration by Maria Luisa Scolastra from Villa Roncalli, Foligno.

Heart has a strong taste, which is not liked by everybody. Therefore it is very cheap. But it is a lean muscle with a wonderful texture. I like it peppered.

I prepared in a soffritto from fresh garlic, spring onions, ginger, charlottes, Sichuan pepper, Chily pepper, black pepper  and charlottes.

The inspiration for this dish came from a recipe of Maria Luisa Scolastra from Villa Roncalli, Foligno. 

This was not intentional.  I was cooking a deer stew and initially I had planned to add the Porcini, so I had them watered (dried porcini).

Then I decided that the stew would be come to rich and that the mushrooms did not fit with the acidic note of the stew sauce. Ah, well, initially I also wanted to add potatoes to the stew, cancelled for the same reason.