This is definetely not a city girl's fancy salad! I am harvesting my olives in Tuscany and it's hard work, from 8 am to 7 pm. At midday, the church bells ring and we know it's time to walk up the hill home. Lunch has to be quick because we need all the daylight we can manage. We can only pick until 5 pm, again the church bells ring to let us know it's time to pack things up. Then we still have 2 hours to tidy up and put the olives away, cleaning as many leaves as possible and laying them in big trays in the cellar. It's really cold out there and you need something to warm you up so, before I left home, I put some vegetables in a very low oven and let them roast really slowly. At midday, my husband cooked some pasta and I mixed everything. Both the mushrooms and the Nepitella (the herb I used for the salad, we picked in the olive grove. The beetroot and the radicchio is pretty much what we have left in the vegetable garden. Nepitella, the herb I used is Calamint in English. It has a flavour of mint and grows all year around and as the Italians say, "Mushrooms and Nepitella, to dye for!"

Share: