RELIGION AND RAVIOLI

The weekend again saw the festival of the Sacred Heart or Sacro Cuore and, although I wouldn't describe myself as a religious person, there is something that I find very uplifting and restful about watching groups of people gathering together to celebrate their religion in a joyful, peaceful  way without causing any harm or disurbance to anyone.  It may be a small festival and it may not be very sophisticated but it is, quite simply, "good" in the Christian sense of the word.

I was invited to watch the procession from a friend's balcony and we had a great time chatting out there, intermittently watching the proceedings, listening to the music coming from the church courtyard, exclaiming at the fireworks and finally, eating.

For yes, there has to be food and this year the programme proudly announced the Sagra (food festival) of ricotta-filled ravioli in sauce - not any old sauce, you understand, but a rich tomato sauce that is lovingly cooked for a long time with 'strattu and pork.  The cook serving the trays of ravioli told my friend's husband that she had earlier made no less than 1,000 ravioli by hand! Well, faced with that information, I'm sure you would agree that it would have been churlish to leave any of the tempting offerings on the individual trays on which they were served. Everyone who bought a tray got ricotta ravioli with not just sauce, but a generous portion of the pork used to flavour it, a sausage, bread and cheese and some sweet ravioli to finish.  Of course, it wouldn't have been an Italian summer festival without ice cream and I had made and taken along some of  that old stand-by of mine which I call "chocolate thingies".

Keep gathering in peace, cari modicani, and I hope the "ravioli lady", once she has recovered from Sunday, gets to make many more!

SPEZZATINO DI AUTUNNO

A life event in the form of a broken boiler precluded further posting last week and, as I felt much in need of warmth, I invented this:

Spezzatino di autunno

1 kg pork cut for spezzatino or casserole  [in Italy, ask the butcher to cut the rind off]
3 zucchini
1 kg piece pumpkin
4 medium potatoes
6 small chillies [not the hottest!] or chilli flakes to taste
1 white onion
1 clove garlic
7 tablesp olive oil
sumac to taste,  coarse seasalt and freshly ground black pepper
2 sachets saffron
200 ml white wine
juice 2 oranges and grated zest of 1

Cut the pumpkin into manageable pieces and cut the peel off. Cut into chunks and cook in boiling, slightly salted water until soft but not falling apart. Drain and set aside.
Slice the zucchini - not too thinly - and cook in 2 tablesp oil until golden on both sides. Drain on kitchen paper.  [I know it sounds odd, putting fried zucchini in a stew but trust me on this.]
Chop the onion and garlic and soften in a large, wide pan. Add the pork pieces and cook, turning, until browned on all sides.
Now add the pumpkin, zucchini, white wine, orange juice, spices, seasoning and chillis.  Stir, then add the potatoes, sliced. [I don't peel them but you can if you wish.]
Leave to simmer, covered, for 50 mins - 1 hour. Stir now and then and add a little water if it seems too dry.  The pumpkin will go mushy but the dish will be all the more flavoursome for that.
Grate orange zest over to serve.

Certainly not Italian but makes good use of autumn ingredients here. Buon appetito.

REPUBLIC DAY PORK WITH CHERRIES AND GINGER

This recipe gets its name simply because I invented it today, which is the Festa della Repubblica holiday in Italy.   It's also the 11th anniversary of my arrival to settle in Sicily with my dog Simi, who will always be in my heart.

As it's the cherry season, I decided to use some with pork loin [lonza] and, as I like fusion cooking, to spice it up with ginger.  Here's what I did:

Pork loin with cherries and ginger

To serve four people generously, you will need a 1 kg piece of rolled pork loin [lonza]. Either ask an Italian butcher to season it for you with some garlic and herbs, including thyme, or rub it all over as best you can with a cut clove of garlic, some seasoning and some mixed fresh herbs yourself.  Ask the butcher to enclose it in butcher's netting or tie it in the normal way with cooking string. Grate a knob of fresh ginger all over it.   

Put the lonza in a glass dish and add 200 ml Prosecco, 1 tablesp pomegranate molasses,  freshly ground coarse seasalt  [I think Himalayan pink salt works best] and freshly ground black pepper to taste.  Leave in the fridge to marinate at least a couple of hours or overnight if you like.  I must say, I am becoming quite a fan of using Prosecco instead of dry white wine in marinades and I like using pomegranate molasses so much that I have to resist the temptation to chuck it in everything!


When you are ready, put it all into a small, foil-lined roasting tin.  Peel about 12 shallots, halve them if large, place them around the pork and cook for 45 mins at 180°C . Baste the pork occasionally and cover with foil if you think the top is browning too much.  [It is not meant to look like a British roast!]

Stone about 30 fresh cherries and put these in a pan with 2 tablesp. pomegranate molasses and another grated knob of ginger.  Just before the cooking time is up, bring  this mixture to the boil, stirring, and simmer for 1 min.  Pour it over the pork and let it continue cooking for another 5 mins at 150°C.


Remove the pork from the oven, let it rest 5 mins, then snip off the netting or string   It will be perfectly cooked. Slice it thinly and spoon the cherries and some of the sauce over it.  Place the shallots around it. Serve the rest of the sauce separately.  You can also garnish the pork with a few sprigs of thyme.

Buon appetito.

This is a variation on lonza recipes I have featured here and here.

BRIT-SICILIAN-INDIAN SHEPHERD'S PIE

Long ago, I used to make the great Madhur Jaffrey's "A Kind of Shepherd's Pie" from her 1994 Madhur Jaffrey's Cookbook - Food for Family and Friends. However, due to the difficulty of obtaining minced lamb here and despite having tried the recipe a couple of times with minced beef, in the end I stopped making it. 

But in colder weather comfort food calls so a few weeks ago I decided to revive the recipe using the ingredients I can easily get here, so it's become a bit British, a bit Sicilian and a bit Indian.  I've kept Madhur's idea of a grilled aubergine base and I think this makes it quite Sicilian too. You can use frozen grilled aubergines, reconstituted as directed on the pack, or just slice an aubergine lengthwise and cook the slices on a tray lined with baking parchment in the oven for 10 minutes. The latter is a tip I picked up from Antonella Clerici and I find that the cooked slices freeze well. The other Sicilian touches are the use of sweet Sicilian carrots, green [French] beans and passata. The Indian part is, of course, the use of spices, though there's another nod to Sicily with the use of cinnamon.

Here's the recipe:

Brit-Sicilian-Indian Shepherd's Pie

1 aubergine, sliced and cooked as above [or use frozen grilled aubergine slices]
100 gr green beans, cooked in boiling water until tender, then drained and cut into small pieces
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
300 gr mushrooms, sliced
1 white onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
500 gr mixed minced meat [a mixture of beef and pork if you are in Italy but you can use all beef or lamb]
2 goodly-sized knobs ginger, peeled and finely chopped
cinnamon
1 kg potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
c. 125 gr butter, softened plus a little extra
200 gr passata, made up to 300 gr with water
4 tablesp olive oil
1 tablesp flour
Handful fresh sage leaves, chopped

Arrange the aubergine slices in a large, fairly deep Pyrex or ceramic roasting dish.

Cook the onion and garlic in the oil until softened, then add the carrot slices and soften these too. Add the meat and cook, stirring, until browned.

Add the beans, mushrooms, half the ginger, a little cinnamon and most of the chopped sage and stir for a couple of minutes.

Add the passata mixture and flour, season and stir well.

Turn the heat down and let the mixture simmer for 20 mins.

Meanwhile, cook the potatoes in boiling water till soft but not disintegrating.

Mix the butter with the rest of the sage leaves, a little more cinnamon and the rest of the ginger. Use this to mash the potatoes.

Now pour the mixture in the pan on top of the aubergines and spoon the mash over. Smooth the top with a palette knife. Add a few small knobs of butter and a final sprinkling of cinnamon.

Cook in the oven at 180° C for 15 mins.

Garnish with some whole sage leaves if you wish.

Buon appetito.

LONZA WITH MOSTARDA

This is yet another variation on using a whole piece of lonza [pork loin], cut in the Italian way. I thought it would be festive to try it with mostarda [Italian mustard fruits]. The most famous mostarda is, of course, made in Cremona and you may find it easier to find a jar in the UK than it is for me in Sicily! However, Lidl Italia do a good version.

For this recipe you need a 1 kg piece of lonza, flavoured with garlic and herbs and encased in butcher's netting. In Italy the butcher will aromatizzare the meat for you but you can do it yourself by making a few holes through the netting with a skewer and rubbing the meat with a mixture of a crushed clove of garlic and chopped, fresh herbs such as rosemary, thyme and sage.  Place the piece of lonza in a Pyrex-style dish and sprinkle a little saffron powder over the top - or the contents of a sachet of saffron if you are in Italy. Add about 0.25 litre of white wine and leave to marinate in a cool place for at least 2 hours.  Turn the lonza in the marinade once.

Heat the oven to 180 C . Grind some black pepper and sprinkle a little coarse seasalt over the top of the lonza and place the dish with the lonza and its marinade in the oven. Cook for 45 minutes, basting once.

About 5 minutes before the cooking time is up, place the juice and grated zest of 2 oranges in a small pan with 2 teasp. sugar, the contents of another sachet of saffron and 2 tablesp. liquid from a jar of mostarda. Bring to the boil, stirring, then simmer for 2 mins. Pour this mixture over the lonza and let it cook for another 5 mins.

Put the lonza on a board, carve it, then serve on a plate with some of the juice. Decorate it with some of the mostarda fruits. You only need some garlic or herb-roasted potatoes and a green salad to go with it.

Buon appetito.

PORK CHOPS WITH ZUCCHINI

Last weekend, I hit upon the idea of combining good tomato sauce and Dijon-style mustard to cook with pork and this dish worked so well I'll be making it again tomorrow!

Thinly slice 6 courgettes and arrange them in a lightly oiled ceramic or Pyrex roasting dish. Finely chop two red onions and spread them over the courgettes. Season. 

Now brown 8 boneless pork chops - thin ones, like escalopes - in 3 tablesp olive oil. Drain them on kitchen paper, then arrange on top of the courgettes and onions. Add a handful of rinsed and drained salted capers.

Mix 330 g homemade tomato sauce or bought passata with a dessertspoon of Dijon-style mustard, some seasoning, a little paprika and a little dried oregano.. Mix well and pour over the chops.

Cover with foil and cook at 180 C for one hour.

Serves 4.

LONZA WITH CRANBERRY SAUCE AND CAMPARI

Here is yet another variation on a whole piece of lonza [pork loin]! This time I had decided I needed to use up the cranberry sauce I'd made just after Christmas, and had the idea of using it with lonza. I knew it needed a kick of something but couldn't think quite what. Then, in the middle of the night, I thought of campari. I didn't have any in the house but the owner of the bar opposite was happy to give me some in an espresso cup! Here's what I did:

Ask your butcher to make a few incisions in a 1.5 kg piece of lonza so that you can insert slices of orange in them. [This time you don't want the lonza in butcher's netting.] When you get the meat home, insert half an orange slice in each incision, along with a leaf of fresh sage and a couple of rosemary needles. Rub over some coarse seasalt [I used pink Himalayan salt] and a couple of grindings of mixed peppercorns and tie the lonza at intervals with kitchen string. Put it in a dish and pour over the juice of an orange and 200 ml white wine. Marinate in the fridge for 2 hours or so, turning once.

When you are ready to cook, turn the lonza back over and place it in a smallish roasting pan lined first with foil and then with baking parchment. Pour the marinade over it and cook for 1 hour at 180 C.  [Italian ovens tend to be fast so I turned mine down to 160 C half way through cooking.]  Baste the lonza after half an hour.

Just before the cooking time is up, mix about 200 gr cranberry sauce with the juice of another orange and half an espresso cup of campari. Place in a shallow pan on the hob and cook, stirring. When the mixture bubbles, turn the heat down and keep stirring for another 2 mins. Pour this over the pork and give it another 5 mins in the oven.

Cut off the string, carve the pork and serve with the sauce.

Serves 6 - buon appetito!

SPEZZATINO OF PORK WITH LEMONGRASS

It's not often that I find fresh lemon grass in Sicily but I did find some last time I was in Catania. In its honour, I invented this recipe:

Spezzatino of pork with lemon grass

A note on the spezzatino cut:  When I first came to Sicily, I found the cubes of meat that butchers would cut for spezzatino too big and I used to get them home and cut them again. Over the years, though, I've got used to the bigger pieces and, if you want to make a pork spezzatino, a good butcher will give you pieces with a fair bit of fat on at one end. They believe that this is good for the flavour and they are right.

In a wide pan, soften 1 sliced white onion in 4 tablesp olive oil, then add 1 kg pork pieces for spezzatino and brown on all sides - about 10 mins.  Add 3 chopped lemon grass bulbs, season the mixture with a few grindings of mixed peppercorns and some coarse seasalt, then add water to just cover the meat. Add 2 dried chilli peppers, 2 teasp dried sage and 2 teasp dried oregano and stir. Cover and simmer for 1 hour, turning the meat now and then.

Fish out the chilli peppers and serve.

Serves 4.

ON HAVING YOUR SANTA AND EATING HIM

The tree and decorations have been taken down and put away and it's all over for another year, God willing - but it wasn't over for me before two other feste had been crammed into the season!

On Sunday I was invited to Chiara's for lunch again and there we were treated to two kinds of lasagne, this one with aita [chard]....

... and this one which contained meat and tomatoes:

Then there was a spezzatino of pork:

After the fruit, there were dates and homemade torrone,

some of Chiara's Christmas cake and some special, traditional, handmade biscuits:

There was also Chiara's chocolate cake:

Yesterday was the Epifania holiday in Italy and I invited a friend to tea.  I made date and cinnamon cookies [top left]. I'd found the recipe in an Australian magazine and, although they didn't come out scone-like as the recipe suggested, they did resemble the photo in the magazine and tasted good.  To the right of them is a plate of crackers with my [tardily made] cranberry sauce, because you just have to have a taste of cranberry sauce at Christmas. In front of the date cookies is a plate of cheese bites with cotognata [quince paste]. I also cut up the last of my own Christmas cake and made yet another raspberry upside-down cake.

Putting the sugar Santa on the raspberry cake - and I assure you I bought six so did not use the same one each time! - I was reminded that, at Irma's on New Year's Day, a young niece of Irma's decided she didn't want to eat any cake but did want to demolish the sugar Santa.  "He won't come next year if you eat him!" said her mother, at which the little one started to cry.  "No, no, it's all right - he'll come!" we all chorused, until she smiled again and finished him off.  

I also made a semifreddo of candied Sicilian zest - and decorated it with the last Santa!

But never mind - in Italy it is always possible to have your Santa and eat him!

NEW YEAR AT IRMA'S

My friend Irma always comes up with original and refined menus for special occasions and presents her dishes very elegantly so I was delighted when she invited me to lunch on New Year's Day.

To begin, there was couscous salad and that is potato that Irma has so cleverly cut into star shapes:

There were also home-cured olives

and these pastries which, sadly, I had to pass on as they contained fish:

There were spiedini, too - and we're still only on the antipasti!

The pasta with ham and mushrooms on a purée of zucchini was a triumph,

as was the main dish of tender pork:

Afterwards there were these little chocolate cakes

and orange peel candied by Irma's sister:

I made the raspberry upside-down cake again and was a little concerned because it sank in the middle a bit this time, but it's amazing what you can do with a few cake decorations!

Then there was a very special panettone

and an equally enormous pandoro:

As you can imagine, we were all very content by mid-afternoon!  Grazie, cara Irma.

BALTHAZAR'S ROAST

It was putting out the Sicilian crib, with both Sicilian and more traditional figurines, which I was given some years ago that did it: I decided I wanted some eastern flavour in my weekend cooking and this is what I came up with:

Ask your butcher for a 500 gr piece of lonza [pork loin] in butcher's netting.  When you get it home, rub it all over as best you can with a cut clove of garlic, some seasoning and some mixed fresh herbs such as thyme and sage - especially thyme. [An Italian butcher will probably do this for you, using his own mixture - trust him!]  Put it in a dish and marinate it in 2 glasses of white wine and 1 tablsp culinary rosewater in the fridge overnight.

About an hour before you want to serve it, put it in a small, foil-lined roasting pan with the marinade and roast for 45 minutes at 180 C. 

Five minutes or so before the end of this time, put 2 tablesp pomegranate molasses and 200 gr frozen mirtilli [which are not blueberries or cranberries as some dictionaries suggest but whortleberries] in a small pan over a low heat. Stir in a few pomegranate seeds and cook, stirring, until the mixture starts to bubble. Now cook and stir the mixture for a further minute. When the 45 mins for the roast are up, pour the mixture over it and cook at 150 C for a further 5 mins.

Let the roast stand for a few minutes, then cut the net off, slice the roast and serve with the mirtilli and their sauce. Sprinkle a few more pomegranate seeds over the slices if you like.

I suggest serving this with herb-roasted potatoes, which can go in the oven at the same time as the roast.

I have no idea whether Balthazar might have eaten pork, by the way!

STINCO WITH HARISSA

The Moro Cookbook has a recipe for roast chicken which has been marinated in harissa and the other day, it occurred to me that this should work with stinco of pork.  Stinco is the shin cut and it is much beloved of Italians for Sunday lunch. Some of my friends just marinate it in red wine - preferably a Nero d'Avola, they all say - and herbs, then cook it slowly in the oven.  I decided to liven it up a bit and this is what I did:

Rub about 1 tablesp harissa all over a stinco. Put it in a bowl, season, and sprinkle a little dried oregano over it.  Leave in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

Line a small roasting tin with foil and put the stinco in the centre. Slice 3 largeish, unpeeled potatoes and 2 carrots. Cut a red pepper into strips. Put the vegetables around the stinco and add about 6 unpeeled garlic cloves.  Season the vegetables and add some sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme.  Pour 3 tablesp olive oil over the vegetables and drizzle a little over the stinco.  Pour the juice of 2 - 3 lemons over the vegetables, too.

Cover the tin with foil and put it in the oven at 170 C for 1.5 hours, turning the vegetables over half way through the cooking. Then take the foil off, add a little more oil and cook for another 20 - 30 mins.  Watch it carefully during this time.

Slice the stinco and serve with the vegetables.

This will serve 3 people. If you want to serve more hungry folk, you can always add another stinco!

Buon appetito.

SPEZZATINO OF PORK AND PEPPERS

February evenings can be chilly in Sicily and when that happens, a good spezzatino is what I need.  On Saturday I threw this one together and it was successful:

Spezzatino of pork and peppers
[serves 4]

4 tablesp olive oil
1 kg cubed pork for spezzatino [My butcher makes sure there is a fair bit of fat on the meat, as he believes, rightly, that this will give the stew a better flavour. The "cubes" are big in Sicily!].
1 medium white onion, chopped
1 large red and 1 large yellow pepper, chopped not too finely
400 gr can pomodorini [cherry tomatoes] in their juice or of chopped tomatoes
c. 200 gr sliced mushrooms
a little chopped parsley and sage
large glass white wine
coarse seasalt and black pepper

Brown the pork pieces, stirring, in the oil.  After 2 mins, add the onion and keep stirring. When the meat is brown all over, add the peppers and cook for 10 mins. Add the tomatoes with their juice, white wine and herbs.  Bring to the boil, season and simmer for about one hour.

Serve with orange salad and feel warm and cared about.

SPECIAL PANCETTA

I found this special white pancetta, made by non-industrial methods, in the supermarket.  It has a very pleasant, mild flavour.  What did I make with it?  This old favourite.

CARNIVAL IN RAGUSA

There was son et lumière, a parade of masked figures and dancing for all at Ragusa's Carnevale nel Barocco in the city's Piazza San Giovanni on Sunday evening:

Best of all, €5.00 bought you a tray of pasta with traditional pork sauce, a hunk of local bread, a glass of red wine and a container of chiacchiere:

My, that sauce was good!

A SORT OF COTTAGE PIE - WITH A MYSTERY INGREDIENT

This recipe, a sort of Italian cottage pie, is from a book called Cucina Low Cost. Only garlic and onion are cooked in olive oil prior to adding the meat but, in addition to the mince - in this case, a mixture of beef and pork but it could be mince of your choice - there is an ingredient I had never heard of before, pasta di salame. I was rather irritated with myself about this but was comforted by the fact that none of the Sicilians I asked knew what it was either.  I did an internet search and, although I found some recipes requiring this ingredient, none of them told me what it was. "From the best supermarkets", said a note in one of these recipes but no one had heard of it in the local supermarket.  By this time, I had begun to suspect that we were probably talking about a sausage mix and at my next stop, the butcher's, this was confirmed.  My butcher seasons his sausage meat with fennel seeds, sage and red wine so some of this to put in the dish seemed a great idea to me!

One thing I don't miss about Britain is most British cheese and I cannot stand cooked Cheddar cheese, so I was happy to sprinkle a mixture of ragusano and grana cheese over the top of the dish.  Oh, and some 'strattu was stirred in with the meat, onion and garlic, too.

I was pleased with the result and will definitely be making this again.

FAVOURITE RECIPE FROM 2011

This recipe, which I found late in 2011 in an Italian magazine - sorry, I forget which - definitely gets my vote for culinary discovery of the past year!  Having made it several times now, I have altered it a little and so give it here:

Ask your butcher for 1 kg pork loin in one piece [Italian cut] and also ask him to wrap it in butcher's netting.  If, like my butcher, he offers to season it for you with fresh sage, garlic, seasalt and black pepper, let him, for the finished result will be all the more delicious! When you get the meat home, make incisions all over the top - I used a skewer to do this - and jam some rosemary needles into the holes.  Put the meat in a Pyrex dish in which it will just fit and pour 2 large glasses of white wine over it. Sprinkle a little more rosemary over the top and  leave to marinate for at least 2 hours.  Cook in an oven heated to 180 C for 25 mins, then turn the meat over and cook for 20 mins more. While this is happening, stir 4 teasp brown sugar with the juice of 4 large lemons over a low heat. When the mixture gets syrupy, add 2 tablesp Calvados and stir to amalgamate. Pour the sauce over the meat and cook it for another 10 mins. 

Slice the meat as thinly as you can to serve and pour the sauce over.

PORK CHOPS WITH MUSHROOMS

To make this pork dish I followed [more or less] a recipe in the November edition of Alice Cucina.  The sauce is made with red wine, passata and just enough balsamic vinegar to give it an interesting tartness. Sage, bay, onion, garlic and juniper berries also flavour the dish and mushrooms are added towards the end of cooking.  I added potatoes because I was hungry and couldn't be bothered to mash some as an accompaniment as the recipe suggests.

BACON DAY COOKING

Saturday was International Bacon Day and in honour of the occasion I made this from the "cookbook that never lets me down", Marcella Hazan's Marcella Cucina.  I've featured the dish before on the blog but not for four years, so I hope you'll forgive me!  It's Marcella's involtini di maiale - pork escalope rolls filled with slices of wafer-thin pancetta and gherkins. The dish is flavoured with garlic and sage.  I now use canned  pomodorini [cherry tomatoes] in recipes requiring a can of chopped tomatoes:

PORK WITH PINK PEPPERCORNS AND LEMON

"You don't want lonza [loin] for spezzatino", said my trusty butcher when I explained that this was the cut specified in the recipe.  "It's too lean",  he continued, so I told him I would take the cut that he advised.   And I'm jolly glad I did because the dish, of pork marinated in lemon juice with pink peppercorns and the unpeeled slices of another lemon, then cooked slowly in abundant olive oil with a red onion, a bunch of fresh herbs and no extra liquid save two ladlefuls of brodo, turned out to be meltingly tender and absolutely delicious. 

Those of you who are in Italy will find the recipe in the July edition of Vero Cucina.  You must use Sicilian lemons, of course!