IL ROSPO NEL BUCO

A former student of mine, a military man, had been asking me to make him "toad in the hole" since it was mentioned in an article we read in class.  I must admit I'd been avoiding it as it's not one of my favourite dishes and I hadn't made it for years but how can you refuse a fighting man? So when he came home to Sicily for a visit last weekend, I relented and made it.

First, though, I served antipasti, including the aubergine polpette I mentioned here [I decided to keep the sauce], Asiago cheese with cherries, olives and datterini tomatoes and salame tartlets, a Jill Dupleix  idea. I'm always afraid of not serving enough, so there had to be a bowl of crisps!

Then the rospo nel buco, using Italian sausages and to which I added some sage and chopped rosemary. I must say, the nerve-wracking thing did puff up nicely:

And finally, as this was, mostly, a British evening, a summer pudding:

You'll be glad to know, and I was very relieved, that it was all a success!

AN EARLY CHRISTMAS GIFT

I was delighted to receive this bottle of this year's extra-virgin olive oil from my friends at Barbuto. The colour is sublime. I can't wait to taste it and I love the label, too!

TREAT OF THE WEEK - 14

What with all the Ferragosto inconveniences last week, I found myself much in need of comfort food and what could be more comforting than mashed potato?  In this heat, I also wanted something cold so I was pleased to find a recipe for a cold, mashed potato zuccotto in this month's La Cucina Italiana. The potatoes are mashed with olive oil, seasoning, grated lemon zest, basil and parsley and the filling contains chopped, roasted tomatoes, chopped rocket, chopped green and black olives and, in my version, capers - these last for no better reason than that I like them. [I substituted them for the onion in the recipe.]  The sauce around the zuccotto is the sieved juice saved from the tomatoes as they were deseeded prior to roasting.  A good old British pudding basin was called up for zuccotto mould duty.

PECORICCO

Pecoricco is a flavoured sheep or goat's cheese from the Nebrodi.  I've seen it flavoured with pepper and rocket before but I'd never seen this version before this week:  it is flavoured with red chilli pepper, rocket, capers and stuffed olives and I like it!

A SUNDAY GIFT

What a lovely surprise I had this morning when my doorbell rang and a friend appeared with these olives, fresh from her tree.

I haven't done any "olive bashing" for a few years but I will start processing these tomorrow, according to my friend Linda's instructions [which I first posted in 2006]:

Olive schiacciate - Bashed olives

Bash the olives [not too enthusiastically] with a stone, rolling pin or whatever you have to hand. Don't do this near a clean wall or with your best clothes on as they squirt everywhere. [I have found this out to my cost.] Put them in a plastic container, cover with water and add a handful of coarse seasalt. You should change the salt and water solution twice a day for 10 days. Then put them in vinegar and water [about a quarter vinegar to water] for 24 hours. After that, rinse them. They can be frozen in bags at this stage if you have a lot of them. When you are ready, put the olives in jars and add the flavourings of your choice - people here like to use chopped carrots, red pepper and garlic - then cover with olive oil.

LAMB WITH OLIVE PÂTÉ

As I've mentioned before, it is not always possible to find lamb cuts here and even rarer to find any that resemble a British lamb chop.  However, the costate available in the supermarket last weekend were pretty near so I decided to buy some to try out a recipe idea I had:

Long ago, when, back in Britain, I cooked my way through Valentina Harris's Southern Italian Cooking, I learnt that lamb and olives are a good combination and for a while now, I've been wondering if I could use black olive pâté, which we can buy cheaply in tubes here, in a lamb dish.  This is what I did:

Heat 3 tablesp olive oil in a fairly deep pan and cook the lamb chops on all sides.  [I used 6 for 2 people as there tends to be less meat on the cuts available here.]  When the lamb is brown, add a roughly chopped red onion with 2 chopped red peppers and continue cooking until these soften.  Then add 1 tablesp black olive pâté plus 1 tablesp 'strattu [tomato paste, not purée] and stir everything around until both are dissolved.  Now add 5 ml white wine, two or three large, unpeeled potatoes, cut into cubes, and season to taste.  For me any dish containing lamb and potatoes also has to contain rosemary so I added a few sprigs and some fresh thyme while I was at it.  Put the lid on the pan and simmer for 1 hour, stirring now and then and adding a little water if necessary.

Serve with a green salad to which you have added fresh mint.

RICE SALAD WITH GRILLED NECTARINES

Ever since I made the chicken salad with grilled peaches, I've been wanting to use their cousins, nectarines, in a salad and this is what I came up with today:

First, prepare your rice.  I've got about 500 gr salad rice in here but obviously you can adjust the quantity.  Cook the rice according to the instructions on the pack, drain it in a sieve and run cold water over it quickly.  Put it in a large serving bowl and, as soon as it is cool enough, put it in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.

Next, prepare a cucumber in the time-honoured Jennifer Paterson way:  peel and deseed it, then chop it finely and leave in a dish with a little fine seasalt sprinkled over it for about an hour, preferably in the fridge.  

Now slice 4 nectarines - no need to peel them - and grill them in a little oil on a griddle pan.  If they are very juicy, you won't get many griddle marks but you will get enough to make things look smart.  Be sure to stand well back to avoid getting splashed.  Lift the slices out with a fish slice and let them drain on kitchen paper.  Put these in the fridge when cool enough, too.

I decided I wanted to add some mushrooms and you can either toss some sliced ones in a pan with a little olive oil with oregano or use antipasto ones as I did today.  You also need to finely chop a red pepper and a celery stalk or two.  Sicilian celery has very slender stalks but you don't need much of it!

Chop 6 - 8 black olives, too.

When you are ready to assemble the salad, make a dressing from 6 tablesp olive oil, 1 tablesp balsamic vinegar, 1 tablesp your favourite honey [as a homage to the nectarines] plus seasalt and freshly ground black pepper.  Drain and rinse the cucumber, dry the pieces on kitchen paper and add them to the rice along with all the other vegetables and the nectarines.  Stir well, then pour over the dressing and mix well.  Scatter over a few basil leaves if you like.

This doesn't really need any accompaniment but, influenced by a television advert, I put some salame slices on some of those very thin slices of Galbanino cheese.  My touch was to tie the "parcels" with blanched chives.  Yes, some of the cheese cracked a little and I couldn't do perfect bows but that's life!  

CHICKEN WITH ORANGES AND COURGETTES

This dish, from the June edition of Vero Cucina, turned out to be delicious: the chicken joints and orange slices are marinated in olive oil, ginger and saffron and then cooked slowly with the zucchini and, later, the olives in a mixture of brodo and honey:

I'm looking forward to making it again during the Sicilian orange season when it will, I am sure, taste even better!

CHICKEN BOCCONCINI WITH OLIVES AND RED ONIONS

For those of you in Italy, the basis for this was a recipe in last week's Donna Moderna but I think I have changed it enough, mainly by adding potatoes and more herbs, to be able to give my version here.  I haven't suddenly relented and started peeling potatoes, by the way, but can I help it if supermarkets here are now selling chilled packs of peeled, new ones?

First of all you will need a whole, boned and skinless chicken breast which, as I've explained before, means asking for one breast if you are in Italy but two if you are in the UK.  Cut the breast into bite-sized pieces.  Slice two or three red onions.  Heat three tablesp olive oil in a wide pan and cook the chicken in this until sealed on all sides.  Add the onions and cook for a minute or two.  Now add the amount of new potatoes you want,  seasalt and black pepper to taste, some fresh basil leaves, sprigs of rosemary and some dried oregano and continue cooking for about five minutes.   Throw in a handful of black olives, give everything a good stir, put the lid on and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Buon appetito.

"THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM"

"Things are not always what they seem", admonishes this old postcard, which I've had in my collection for as long as I can remember:

And this afternoon that's what I told some of my students, who were surprised when my friend Lucia turned up at the school bearing this bottle as a gift:

The bottle contains something that I appreciate far more than whisky, namely some of Lucia's own olive oil.  It has a lovely, clear colour and tastes delicious.

Grazie, Lucia!

THE OLIVE PICKERS' LUNCH THAT WASN'T

Olive picking with Chiara and family having been rained off yesterday, their friends were invited to lunch just the same and what a homely, comforting aroma greeted us, for no one makes lasagne like Linda: 

Then there was homemade bread

with ham and tomatoes.  I liked this presentation with capers:

There was a selection of Sicilian cheeses,

the new season's grapes

and I resurrected my quickest-ever lemon cake, jazzing it up with pink icing sugar:

A fine lunch for those who had spent a hard morning thinking about olive picking!

LIQUID GOLD

I chanced upon a farmers' market in Modica Bassa on Saturday:  there were stalls piled high with cheeses, tables teeming with purple broccoli, artichokes so fresh they looked as if they would get up and dance and all sorts of other spring produce.  October's olive oil was being sold  for 5 euros a litre and the texture of this traditional bread was too perfect to resist.   In times gone by shepherds would have carried bread such as this for it did not go off for many days.  They would have softened it with a little olive oil. 

Traditional, handwoven baskets were on sale too:

Further along the Corso I stopped for a gelato:

A perfect Saturday morning!

LUCIA'S OIL - 2

Not a bottle of Amaretto [sorry, DD] but a bottle of Lucia's new olive oil, which she so kindly brought me today. It tastes divine!

LUCIA'S OIL

I got back from work at 8.30 pm to find a carrier bag tied to the door. I knew it had to be from Lucia and inside was this bottle of oil made from her own olives. I could just gaze at the colour of it all night!

AND A "BLOOMSNIGHT" SUPPER

Supper with Linda, Chiara and Gino after the Joyce events:

Two traditional types of pizza




with home-produced sun-dried tomatoes and olives



plus mozzarella and grilled, dressed peppers:



Perhaps you heard my sighs of contentment where you are, reader?

REPUBBLICA DAY BREAD

As today is the 63rd anniversary of the Italian Republic, I am naming the bread recipe that I invented this afternoon for it. [It also happens to be the 4th anniversary of the day Simi and I arrived to live in Sicily. Newer readers may like to read about that here. ] Don't worry - the bread's not green, white and red; in fact, it's an easy olive bread.

For this you will need some nice olives that have been preserved in oil and other flavourings. How many? I don't know - it depends on the size of them. About 24, probably. Today I proudly used some I had "bashed" and preserved myself, to my friend Linda's recipe. You will also need:

1 lb 00-type flour [or strong bread flour in the UK]
a good pinch of salt
half a cube yeast or a packet easy-blend yeast
1 teasp sugar
2 tablesp olive oil from the jar of olives
about 2 tablesp black olive paste
tepid water

Put everything except the olives and olive paste into a large bowl if you are going to use the dough hooks of a hand mixer or into the bowl of a food processor. [If you are using cubed yeast, crumble it in.] Add about 125 ml tepid water and mix. You may need to add a little more water to get a dough that comes together easily. Put a little olive oil in the bottom of a clean bowl, add the ball of dough and cover with a damp tea towel. Leave it to rise in a warm place for about an hour. Meanwhile, drain, stone and halve the olives.

When the dough has doubled in size, put it on a floured board and push it down. Then bash it about a bit. Pull it into as oblong a shape as you can, then dot about half the olives over it. Roll it up from a short end and shape it into an oblong loaf again. Bash it down again, stretch it out, and this time, spread the olive paste over it. Roll up as before.



Shape it again, stretch it out and add the rest of the olives.



Roll it up again and reshape into a loaf.



Put it into an oiled, 2lb loaf tin and bake in an oven pre-heated to 200 C for 30 mins. Leave it in the tin for about 5 mins, then shake it out of the tin [it should come out easily] and turn it onto a cooling tray. It is delicious hot, though I say so myself, so you only need to let it cool for about 10 minutes before slicing.



Viva la Repubblica!

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DUCK WITH ORANGES AND PEPPERS

This is my adaptation of an Elizabeth Luard Spanish recipe. [There are some cooks you can just trust and for me, she is one of them.] I have changed the method slightly for I am partial to a bit of "throwing" and "chucking" when it comes to cookery, as many of you know and my additional ingredients are red and green peppers, as I had some to use up. At first I didn't think their flavour would blend well with that of honey and oranges but then I remembered Moroccan cookery and decided to be fearless. From now on I will always use them in this dish.

Duck is not readily available here but I've had a jointed one in the freezer since Christmas and that needed using, too!

Roll the duck joints in seasoned flour. Heat 4 tablesp. olive oil in a large pan or wok and chuck them in. Let them brown, turning over often. Throw in a some ground cinnamon, ground cloves and ground ginger [Luard gives measurements but that's no fun and I haven't the pazienza] then add a bit of chopped garlic, a sliced green and a sliced red pepper and some stoneless olives. Add a glass of white wine and let it all bubble up. Grate the zest of 2 oranges and add with the juice of another and a tablespoon of honey. Segment the 2 oranges and add to the mixture. Turn the heat down, put the lid on and let it all cook for 1 hour, stirring often. Serve with a green salad.

FOODIE FRIDAY

St David's Day is coming up and I am in the middle of one of my cooking marathons, as I seem to have invited half of Modica to my bash on Sunday.

I am keeping myself going by munching these marvellous Ascolane olives [each morsel consists of 2 olives together, stuffed with a pork, breadcrumb and cheese mixture].

By tradition I would feel honour-bound to serve bara brith on St David's Day but Sicilians won't eat dried fruit. [Well, they will eat my Welshcakes with sultanas in, but that's about all.] So this morning I baked this date loaf. It's from the Amser Te book, which I now have to admit I have kept since 1959! [I used boxed dates as you couldn't get fresh ones in the UK at that time.]

I've been cooking ever since [this morning, I mean, not 1959!] and there are more refined-looking cakes to be made tomorrow, plus Welshcakes which I'll make on Sunday morning. Rosa, who again came along to be the "gofer", exclaimed, as she left this evening, "Ma non fanno di più per un matrimonio!" [= "They don't make any more than this for a wedding!"] I never could do things by halves.

UN TRIONFO

That's what this dish turned out to be, though I say it myself and it is a trionfo brought to you much later than planned, tonight. My keyboard has gone funny, acting as though it is encypted or something. Yes, I know I have pressed some silly button, but I don't know which! All advice welcome. [Doing this now on the older, slower computer.] Back to the dish, which is from Claudia Roden's Arabesque so I can't give you the copyright recipe, but I can describe it! Basically the dish consists of chicken pieces cooked slowly in a sauce containing ginger and saffron. There is something homely and comforting about the aroma of chicken cooking with saffron, you know.
I have 3 other reasons - or excuses - for including this dish here:

1. Those are my very own bashed olives in there! [I didn't grow the olives, but I sure bashed and preserved them!]
2. I have prepared Middle Eastern preserved lemons many times, but did not get around to it this week. So I chucked in some lovely strips of Sicilian green lemons and they made a very good substitute indeed.
3. CR suggests adding frozen artichoke hearts and, as these are readily available here, I did. You sort of tuck them below the chicken and sauce and they are an extra surprise!

CHICKEN WITH OLIVE PASTE

I am not a fan of the olive paste that comes in tubes, but the type we can get here in jars, from delis, is sublime and made to traditional methods. So I looked around for a recipe in which I could use up a fair quantity of it, and came across one in an old Good Housekeeping book of mine: it contains chicken joints, the paste, cherry tomatoes, artichoke hearts [this time bought marinated in a pack though we can also buy frozen ones here] green pepper strips, shallots and I just had to add a dollop of 'strattu [tomato paste]. It turned out much better than I expected!