Grated Horse Meat and Cow Diagphram - A Trip to Mercato Centrale with Divincucina

As I lay awake in bed, my head spinning with images of calves' heads and pasta, I tried to recall what it was that I had seen in the Mercato Centrale the day before. I had spent that day with Judy Witts Francini (aka Divinacucina) on a market tour - a Christmas present from Dr B. Judy is a Tuscan food maven. She is friends with the Western world's most famous butcher, has taught many a food writer about the food in Florence and seems to know everyone in and around the market. She has been cooking with its produce for the last 20 years and has published a book on Tuscan food.

The tour was an unforgettable experience and, where I would usually leave the market with my head throbbing with a hundred questions, this time I left with all of my questions answered. That said, my brain still hurt after all I had seen, tasted, and had explained to me. There is a lot of food in that place.

We started the tour with visits to an enoteca ('this ones for the reals winos as they don't sell any food'), then a family run salumeria and butcher. An osteria, a cafe for espresso and fritelle di riso, and then another enoteca. In each place I received a potted history, an introduction to the proprietor as an old friend ('il casalingo di Settignano'), a tip or pointer to the best products. 'Oh look these are Easter specialities; his cellar is huge; I haven't seen these liver sausages before; I love these white rolls with milk'. I get the gossip and the background; in the street old friends are greeted at every corner.

By the time we get to the central market my head is already bloated with gastroinfo. I had visited the market only a couple of times before and hadn't really got to grips with all that is contained there. There is so much to see and so much to buy. Judy lead me round, introducing me to butchers, a Sicilian family turning out hot food, a cheese supplier, a specialist tripe seller, a family selling fine oils and pastas.

So we began to taste. And we tasted oil and balsamic, dwarf peaches with truffles, more oil and cheese. I was so busy looking at the products around me and talking to my host that my bearings got completely skewed. As I write this I am thinking I have to get back before I forget who and what was where. Where was the Parmesan seller with the good stuff at the right price? And the offal man, who was he next to?

We leave after I have purchased the requisite oil and vinegar along with truffle salt (on my eggs the following morning) and some prized 'Sfilacci di Equino' - dried shredded horsemeat. [It's worth pointing out that this really is an archetypal purchase for me. Weird and cheap. Guaranteed to impress the boys back home. My friend Tony who is my gastronomic sparring partner here in Florence blithely informs me that he's eaten loads. 'Yeh, I've had it on pizza'. 1-0 to Tony.] I could have left with so much more. Particularly from the offal seller. He (and his wife?) had everything from diagphram ('skin it, slice it thin, and fry it like steak') to kidney, lungs to spleen. Judy and I spent a long time ogling this counter. Kindred spirits looking for those undervalued cheap cuts. So much raw material. So many possibilities.

We eventually left to head to Pepo for lunch - frustratingly close to the unvisited 'Da Mario'. Here I tucked into delicious gnocchi, the ubiquitous tagliata and a great creme brulee. We then wandered at a more leisurely pace through Florence's crowded streets until I eventually (and unwillingly) let Judy go home at the Duomo.

It was a great Christmas present and a truly fun and informative day's tour. If you are heading to Florence and you are keen to have some of the local flavours and foods introduced and explained to you, Judy is your woman. Ask Jay Rayner amongst others.

You can book your tour here.

For the forseeable future I will be working my way through her cookbook and figuring out how I can get Dr.B to eat cow diagphram.

A New Year's Eve to Remember - Or The Hunt For The Great Meal

Let's start at the end. The end of the last day of 2009. The end of our trip down South to Pompeii and the beautiful island of Ischia. Picture the scene, a hotel rooftop overlooking Vesuvius with firecrackers exploding across the night sky. Two happy families from opposite sides of the pond joining together to celebrate in Italy on New Years Eve.

And what better way to celebrate than with that traditional Italian New Year's delicacy 'il Ambourger'. But not any burgers. This is not the UK remember, this is Italy and this the south with it's fertile volcanic soil, it's amazing bakers, it's wonderful ingredients, it's love of food. So these are no ordinary burgers, these are super ordinary - ambourger ordinarissimo.

For encased in a sesame seed bun of the kind I thought you couldn't even get here in Italy, is a tough gray oval of mdf that must surely have come from Tesco's value range. This is no 'il Mac'. No, this is a burger worthy of an English B road burger van. And this is New Year's Eve in Italy.

We do our best with our limited supply of ketchup sachets and we toast 2010 with crap red wine or milk in plastic cups. Goodbye 2009 on this NYE  to remember.

The reason for the burgers was NYE. Nearly everywhere was closed. The usually bustling streets around our hotel were deserted. We wanted pizza and the only place open selling pizza refused us takeaway. We were late back from Naples - the home of pizza. We'd walked dimly lit backstreets searching for authentic Neapolitan pizza but the place we were looking for was closed too. A restauranteur took mercy on us and dispatched us with a carrier bag filled with insipid, saladless burgers wrapped in foil.

Maybe if we hadn't been late coming back from Ischia we would have had more time to find somewhere open. But we were late coming back because we were late having lunch. Over an hour we had waited (with 4 very hungry kids) at Il Pontile after the waiter had taken our order for salads, pasta al pomodoro, burger. He then had the temerity to berate us for complaining about the slow service. The food was 'ok'. The experience wasn't.

Maybe we would have left our hotel earlier if, the previous night, we hadn't been out late living it up in a ristorante 'speciale' where the owner sat down with us and created a menu 'degustazione' before ours eyes with some of his favourite dishes that he described so effusively I was expecting him to weep when he had finished composing the menu. I wept when I saw the bill. And I wondered what it was that was so 'speciale'. And I longed for that increasingly elusive 'great meal' in Italy.

But the food (and the service) was better than the night before at the restaurant nearer our hotel. Where this time the owner ignored us, the mussels were still bearded and the secondi took half an hour to arrive after we had finished the primi.

And so it is that 2010 begins with a desire and determination to have a great meal in Italy. To sit and eat our way through three or so courses of great food and to get to the end and think ..... that really was a great meal. I think that is going to be easier without 3 kids in tow but with or without them we'll find it.