HURRICANE PASTA

 At the end of last week, we were all very worried and frightened in Sicily because a Medicane (a blend of the English words "Mediterranean" and "hurricane") was coming in. In Modica it just passed us by and we were fortunate but the effects were devastating in Catania and the Province of Siracusa, as many of you will have seen in the news. We were told to stay at home on Thursday evening and all day on Friday, if possible and the silence in the streets brought back uneasy memories of lockdown for many of us. The early hours of Thursday were particularly scary.

I did venture to my local greengrocer's late on Thursday afternoon, thinking I might be at home until Sunday, and on Friday evening it was my intention to make an amatriciana, one of my favourite pasta dishes. Then I discovered I had forgotten to buy tomatoes and I didn't have a tin of them to improvise with. I did, however, have pancetta, if not the guanciale (pork cheek) you should really use with an amatriciana. (I remember a Masterchef Italia judge groaning because a contestant was using pancetta cubes, but they weren't in an imminent hurricane situation!) I also had passata and - a favourite store cupboard ingredient of mine - a tin of grilled peppers. Therefore it was with these that I created a comforting pasta dish and I named it "Hurricane pasta":

Hurricane pasta

These quantities will serve two people very generously:

200 gr spaghetti or spaghettoni (which are a bit thicker)

2 tablesp olive oil

100 gr smoked pancetta cubes

1 white onion, chopped

200 gr small mushrooms, sliced

330 ml bottle passata

380 gr tin or jar grilled peppers in oil, drained 

seasalt and freshly ground black pepper

chilli flakes to taste

fresh basil leaves if liked

First, get the pasta water on with a little coarse salt in it and, while it is coming to the boil, heat the oil in a wide pan.

Add the pancetta and, as soon as the fat begins to release, add the onion and cook, stirring until softened but not browned.

Add the mushrooms and stir.

Add the passata and stir, lowering the heat.

Add the drained peppers, having cut any very large pieces in half.

By this time, the pasta water should be boiling, so add the pasta to it and cook for the time stated on the pack (probably 10 - 12 mins.)

Add the seasoning and chilli flakes to the pepper mixture and, at this stage, if liked, you can add a few torn fresh basil leaves.

Drain the pasta once it is al dente and add it to the pan containing the sauce. Stir on low heat for just a few minutes.

Serve and enjoy your "hurricane pasta", hopefully in better weather than we had in Sicily last week!

(SLIGHTLY SICILIAN) CHOCOLATE REFRIGERATOR CAKE

Every cook, I imagine, has a favourite chocolate refrigerator cake recipe and this one, which I came across a few weeks ago, has now become mine. I did add glacé cherries and I "Sicilianised" it by using three different flavours of Modican chocolate (lemon, Zibibbo wine and cinnamon last time). As it is the season, I also added six chopped sticks of the candied orange peel so lovingly made at home or by hand in the pasticcerie here. Go on, try it!

CHICKEN AND CHERRY SALAD

Regular readers will know that, at this time of year, I love experimenting with salads and a few years ago I invented a tagliata and cherry version. This week, I decided I wanted something lighter still and I came up with a chicken and cherry salad.  I wanted to use my favourite spice, sumac, and took the wonderful Nadiya Hussain's advice about sprinkling it on the meat after cooking to keep the red colour. Then I added to the red by playing with pink peppercorns. It all turned out rather well but here is my usual warning to Sicilian purists: I never said it was Sicilian; it's just what I do with the ingredients and cuts of meat available to me here and I like including the Middle Eastern ingredients I learnt to use in Britain.  And yes, the dish contains meat and fruit and I'm not apologising!

Chicken and cherry salad

1 chicken breast, cut into escalopes  (That's two chicken breasts, as sold in Britain, where they are sold in halves, and one as sold in Italy. An Italian butcher will auomatically cut them very thin. In Britain you may need to pound them.)
about 30 fat, dark cherries, stoned
half a large cucumber or 1 small one
500 gr bag rocket leaves
5 tablesp culinary rosewater
olive oil
1 tablesp runny honey
Himalayan pink seasalt
1 dessertsp pink peppercorns, crushed
1 teasp ground ginger
1 teasp ground sumac
1 teasp dried herbes de Provence

First, marinate the chicken pieces for 2 hours in 3 tablesp of the rosewater (or marinate overnight).

Peel the cucumber, deseed and chop it as small as you can. Sprinkle with (ordinary] fine seasalt and leave at least 30 mins. (This is a trick I learned from an early Jennifer Paterson book and I always prepare my salad cucumbers like this.) After 30 mins, rinse, drain and let dry on kitchen paper.

Drain the chicken pieces and pat dry with kitchen paper. Cook them over low heat on a lightly oiled ridged griddle pan - about 2 mins per side. Put them on kitchen paper and let them cool.

In a small bowl, mix well with a fork 6 tablesp olive oil, 2 tablesp rosewater, the honey, ground ginger, pink salt if you have it, half the pink peppercorns and the herbes de Provence. Leave in the fridge.

When the chicken has cooled, cut it into bite-sized pieces - I do this with a kitchen scissors - and place them in a bowl.  Sprinkle the sumac over it and add the cucumber, cherries  and rocket. (At this stage you can leave the salad in the fridge till serving time.] When you are ready, add the dressing and toss well.  Finally, sprinkle the rest of the peppercorns over the salad.

Serves four.

Buon appetito

Note:  Sumac does, in theory, grow in Sicily but I have yet to meet anyone who has heard of it here!

POLLO ALLO ZA'ATAR

Well, here we are, more than half way through 2017 and I find I have not posted a single recipe this year! So, although other matters, such as health and keeping up with Brexit developments (which will affect me very directly, as they will all expats), mean that I am not currently blogging as often as I'd like, let's at least put the culinary matter to rights.

My pollo allo za'atar is my take on a recipe in the June edition of the Italian magazine Vero cucina. This recipe is for bone-in chicken thighs cooked in very litle oil with lemon slices, then sprinkled with a sauce of lemon juice, garlic and mint. I tried it and found it excellent, but this week I decided I wanted to spice it up a little. There is very little za'atar in my version, actually, but I was so delighted to find some in Catania a few weeks ago that I decided it had to feature in the name of my dish.  Here we go:

Heat the oven to 180° C (fan).

Lightly oil a roasting tin and put in 6 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs.

Cut 1 lemon into wedges and add these to the pan.

Add 3 grilled peppers, preferably yellow, orange and red, cut up. (In Italy we can buy fresh, ready-grilled peppers in supermarkets but you could use well-drained grilled peppers in oil or, of course, grill them yourself.)

Sprinkle over some coarse seasalt, black pepper, a little sumac and some fresh lemon thyme leaves and drizzle over a little more olive oil.

Cook for 30 mins.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl mix 2 tablesp Chinese plum sauce,  juice of 1 lemon, 1 teasp sumac and half teasp za'atar.

Check the chicken and if necessary give it 10 mins more in the oven. When you take it out, pour the sauce over it and serve.  Garnish with more lemon thyme leaves if you wish.

SICILY SCENE'S REVIEW OF 2016

The year which drew to a close yesterday was the one in which it became clear to me that the world has learnt nothing from the tragedies and disasters of the last century. Here, a little late, is my review of it:

Ups

Most unexpectedly, falling in love again.

Spending Christmas in Norwich with the sister I have known for only two years and walking through a bauble in that fair city!

Downs

The down side of falling in love - being dumped. It is a much worse experience, I have discovered, than it was when I was young, for there are now so many places to be dumped from, such as social media.

Brexit - even more devastating.

Continuing to hear of needless migration tragedies as the world looks on and does nothing.


Recipe of the year

Of those I have invented myself, this is the one I like best.

Chicken with cedri and Prosecco

Books of the year

The two best books I read in Italian during 2016 were Pesce d'aprile and Lacrime di Sale, Dr Pietro Bartolo's account of migrant tragedies as they affect Lampedusa. I'll shortly be reviewing Lacrime di Sale on Sicily Scene.

The most interesting book I read in English in 2016 was Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Besides telling a gripping story, the book explained to me a conflict which took place during my lifetime but which I knew next to nothing about.

Film of the year

This is related to my second book choice above. It is Fuocoammare.


Italian logic prize

This goes to Rai and the Italian government for this scheme and their strange definition of the term rata [installment].  Predictably, after July consumers were required to pay not one "installment" for the TV licence fee but the remaining six in one go!


Hopes for 2017

Once again, I hope the world wakes up to the fact that we are all migrants and I want to see safe corridors for today's migrants and an end to migration tragedies. I want to hear more from the voices of peace and less from those of belligerance.

I wish you all peace, health and love, wherever you are.

Happy New Year and thank you for reading Sicily Scene!

Buon Anno e grazie di aver letto la Sicily Scene!

You can find links to all my migration posts here and to my adoption posts here.

BISTECCA IN SALSA DI PISTACCHI

This week I wanted to do something different with the pizzaiola steak cut and I decided that a pistacchio and mushroom sauce would do the trick.  In Italy, you just ask the butcher for pizzaiola steak and the cut most often used for this is round steak.  I asked for pizzaiola steak for four people.  I also wanted to incorporate cedro [citron] and this is what I did:

Bistecca in salsa di pistacchi

Cut one cedro in half.  Juice one half and marinate the steak pieces in it with a little dried oregano. Leave it in the fridge for a few hours.  [This will tenderise the meat further as well as adding flavour.] Slice the other half and grill the slices quickly, on both sides, in a little olive oil on a ridged griddle pan.  Set aside.

Drain the steak and pat dry with kitchen paper. Cook the pieces in 2 tblsp olive oil on a ridged griddle pan.  Do not overcook them! Place on kitchen paper as they are ready.  

Keep the steak warm in a dish in the oven while you make the sauce:  Soften a chopped white onion in 2 tblsp olive oil in a frying pan.  Do not allow it to brown.  When it is soft, add 200 gr sliced white mushrooms.  Cook for a few minutes, then add 200 ml panna di cucina if you are in Italy or single cream if you are not.  Keep stirring for a few minutes and season.  Do not let it boil.  Off the heat, add a generous sprinkling of farina di pistacchi  [pistacchio flour - very finely ground pistacchi].

Serve the steaks with the sauce and cedro slices.

KNEADING IN NOTO

No visit to beautiful, architecturally homogeneous Noto is complete, in my opinion, without stopping off at the Caffè Sicilia to enjoy ice cream and cake with unusual but delicate and harmonious flavourings so it was good to see their creator, Corrado Assenza, welcoming the remaining contestants of Bakeoff Italia - Dolci in Forno to his city on TV on Friday.

The technical challenge for the contestants was to produce their own replicas of Corrado Assenza's dolce dell'estate which contains, among other ingredients, a tomato gelatine, nectarines in a special syrup, basil, oranges, hibiscus, black pepper, gin and vodka:

Photo: facebook

If you read Italian, you can find the recipe here .

I have usually been to Noto in summer so I can't say I've noticed the quality of its winds but, judging from this episode, they must be rather choosy, for they blew only on the hair of presenter Benedetta Parodi, ruffling it gently while the contestants, also in the open air, sweated profusely.

The television audience was treated to stunning views of Noto while the judges enjoyed slices of Corrado Assenza's creation on a terrace.

You can watch the Noto episode here until 31.1.17.

Now we are all waiting for the final this Friday and I for one will be glued to my TV. I might even try some of the recipes soon but not before I've asked ny hairdresser how to get my own special breeze blowing flatteringly through my locks whilst leaving everybody else alone!

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.

CONTORNO

I got the idea for serving fried courgette slices with mint and garlic from a TV programme but the other ingredients are my suggestions:

Fry courgette slices [not too thick, not too thin] in olive oil till golden on both sides. Drain on kitchen paper.

Put in a serving dish and sprinkle with plenty of chopped mint, a little parsley, a chopped garlic clove, chilli flakes to taste, salt [Himalayan pink salt works well] and the grated rind of a lemon.

A good side dish - buon appetito.

ANOTHER VISITOR

It has been lovely to welcome my friend the writer and editor Carol King back to Sicily and Sunday had to start with brioche and gelato!

Later there were antipasti, including some fine taralli biscuits from Calabria:

I also made my pizza estiva with grilled nectarines

and a semifreddo di marrons glacés. [This last is a Cucchiaio D'Argento recipe, not one of mine]:

Hope you come back soon too, Carol!

PIZZA ESTIVA

I nearly called this "Pizza not-what-it-seems" as all the Italians I have shown the photo to are convinced it's topped with aubergines!  However,  pizza estiva or "summer pizza" is more catchy.

My starting point for this was the recipe for soft, Modican pizza I was given a few years ago and I added grilled nectarines - one of my favourite summer ingredients - and pancetta cubes.  I used some datterino tomatoes and passata instead of chopped tomatoes.

Pizza estiva

250 gr 00 flour or strong white bread flour
1 cube of fresh yeast, crumbled, or a sachet of easy-blend yeast
coarse sea salt
warm water
200 gr passata
about 20 datterino or other very small cherry tomatoes
dried oregano
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
chopped basil leaves
140 gr pancetta dolce or unsmoked bacon cubes
250 gr mozzarella, sliced thinly or ready-crumbled mozzarella for pizza
a little grated Grana Padana or Ragusano cheese
4 - 6 nectarines, depending on size
extra virgin olive oil

Mix the flour, crumbled yeast cube or sachet of yeast and some coarse seasalt together with enough warm water to make a soft, springy dough. I use a processor and it takes about 3 seconds but you can mix it in a bowl by hand if you want. Then knead it hard – slap it against the sides of the bowl. [Do this even if you have mixed it in a processor.] Leave to double in size in an oiled bowl covered with a clean, damp tea towel.
Slice the nectarines as thinly as you can, then grill them quickly on both sides on a lightly oiled ridged grill pan. Let them cool on kitchen paper.
Now whizz up the datterini or cherry tomatoes in a processor - you just want them mushy - and mix them with the passata, garlic, oregano and basil. Add some coarse seasalt.
Cook the pancetta cubes in a bowl in the microwave for 1 minute.
Slice 6 nectarines as thinly as you can and cook them in a little oil on a ridged griddle pan - about 1 minute per side.  Leave to drain on kitchen paper.
Cover a baking tray or sheet with baking parchment and oil it lightly.
When the dough has almost risen, heat the oven to 180 C [fan] or 200 C.
Chuck the dough onto the oiled baking parchment and stretch it out as best you can into an oblong shape. [I love this bit as it’s messy.] Pat it out with the heel of your hand, dipping your hand in the tomato mixture so that it doesn’t stick to the dough.
Cover the dough with the mozzarella.
Spoon the tomato mixture over, add the nectarine slices and pancetta cubes.  Sprinkle over the grated cheese.
Put the pizza in the oven and cook for 45 minutes. 

Serves 4 people with generous slices.  You could always make two for more guests / hungry people. Italians, of course, like a whole pizza each!

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.

CHICKEN IN PROSECCO WITH CEDRO

Leafing through an old recipe book the other day, I was reminded of Moroccan preserved lemons. I used to be able to get these in the UK and, indeed, had sometimes made them myself. However, being short of both time and patience, I started to think that, in this land of citrus fruit, there ought to be a quicker way of approaching the taste. Then I started to wonder if I could get anywhere near it if I used cedri [citrons], which Sicilians like to just slice and eat with coarse seasalt. I decided to try and the result was better than I'd expected!  Here's what I did:

Chicken in Prosecco with Grilled Cedro

First, slice one cedro into rounds as you would a lemon. [Sicilian cedri are enormous!]  Halve the slices, put them on a plate and sprinkle with coarse seasalt and about ten grinds of cinnamon from a cinnamon mill.  Leave them for at least an hour, then heat 2 tablesp olive oil on a ridged griddle pan and grill the slices over medium heat for about 1 min. each side.  Stand well back when you put the slices on the griddle and when you turn them.  Put them onto kitchen paper on a plate.

Marinate 6 - 8 chicken drumsticks [skin on ] for about 2 hours in 200 ml Prosecco, 2 tblesp olive oil, 1 tablesp honey, 0.5 tablesp Chinese plum sauce [which I have recently been able to get my hands on again and have missed], about 0.5 tablesp dried herbes de Provence, some sprigs of fresh thyme [lemon thyme if you can get it] and some freshly ground seasalt and black pepper. 

Heat the oven to 180°C.

Lift the chicken out of the marinade with a slotted spoon but keep the marinade. Lay the chicken on a rack in a foil-lined roasting dish and cook for about 45 mins., checking now and then.  When you think it is nearly ready, put the marinade into a pan with the cedro slices and about 20 preserved green olives, drained but still with the accompanying small vegetables that have been used to flavour them. [In Sicily olives are always preserved with slices of sweet Sicilian carrot.]   Heat until the marinade comes to the boil.

Place the chicken on a platter , surround with the cedro slices and olives [removed from the marianade with a slotted spoon] and garnish with some chopped, flat-leaved parsley and some more sprigs of thyme.  Put the marinade in a sauce boat for those who would like some.

Serve with garlic-roasted small potatoes or these from Nigella .

Serves 4.

Buon appetito

SICILY SCENE REVISITED - THE COOKERY POSTS [1]

I had always cooked international recipes, and particularly Italian ones, in the UK so it was a bit of a surprise when I first came to Sicily to discover that some of these recipes wouldn't work here because the cuts of meat are different. The second surprise was the lack of spices for, apart from cinnamon, chilli pepper and a mixture known as "curry" [which I leave well alone] for the more adventurous, few are used.  Cumin seeds and ginger are stocked in most supermarkets and you can find harissa, but that's about it.  It is interesting that, despite Arab settlement, Sicily never absorbed the use of spices in the way that other European areas with a Mediterranean coast did.

Yes, I'm well aware that I'm in the country that arguably has the best home cooking in the world and a region within it which is particularly renowned for its culinary traditions, so why would I want to cook dishes outside that repertoire?  Because I'm a Brit and both new and old recipes excite me, I suppose.

I soon worked out ways of adapting the recipes I'd always cooked to what was available here and when I went to Catania and bought unusual spices or my British friends sent me some, I used them to create my own "fusion cooking" as I made friends with my butcher and got to grips with the fine cuts of meat he, and others like him, provide.

Here are three favourites from previously posted  recipes that I have invented myself.

First of all, this is the most read recipe ever on Sicily Scene:

Bistecca alla pizzaiola - 24th August 2008

Bistecca alla pizzaiola: a classic of Neapolitan cuisine, yet these days it is hard to find a recipe for it, among all the rubbish featuring complicated dishes that gets published under the clasification, "Italian cookery". What so many of these authors and their publishers forget is that the primary characteristic of most Italian cookery is that it is simple.

The doyenne of cookery writers, Elizabeth David, of course gives us a pizzaiola recipe, in Italian Food, the volume that, famously, woke the British up to the fact that good food still existed in the postwar era. Valentina Harris [a cook whose earlier books I prefer to her later tomes] also has one, in Italian Regional Cookery. I have mixed the two recipes and added some "Welshcakes" touches!

Here we can buy a pizzaiola cut of beef steak, but if you can't, you need to ask for the widest, thinnest cut possible. Yesterday I was lucky enough to get 4 enormous pieces [which would probably serve 6] for 5.68 euros and they really were so big that I had to cut them in half again!

When I make a pizzaiola, I like to deal with the sauce first: if you want to be a purist, you may use skinned and deseeded tomatoes or your own passata, but for this I find a couple of cans of cherry tomatoes, with their juice, much less trouble and perfectly adequate. Chuck these in a saucepan along with about a tablespoon of olive oil, 2 cloves sliced garlic, some seasalt and ground black pepper and a good handful each of not too finely chopped basil and parsley. You can add some dried oregano too, if you like [and I do!] plus some olives [my touch]. Swirl all this around while it cooks for a few minutes, then take it off the heat.

Now season the meat and cook it in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a wide pan or griddle. [I like to griddle mine.] Whatever you do, do not overcook it. I throw the pieces into the sauce as they are done but authentic recipes will tell you to serve up the meat, then add the sauce. Most Italian cooks would probably let it all cool a little at this point but I serve the dish immediately.

Serves 4 - 6.

Buon appetito!

This is one of the simplest recipes I have come up with and I still make it often:

Militello chicken - 17th October 2010

I invented this dish last night and have decided to call it "Militello Chicken" in honour of the mandarin honey I found in that town last week:

Marinate 8 or so chicken breast escalopes - an Italian butcher will cut these very thinly for you but in the UK you may have to pound them thin - in the juice of 2 clementines, 2 tablesp olive oil and a half teasp saffron powder [or the contents of 2 envelopes of saffron powder in Italy].

After about 2 hours, lift the escalopes out and let them dry a bit on kitchen paper. Heat 2 tablesp olive oil in a ridged griddle pan and cook the escalopes on both sides. [Stand well back as you put them in.] Lift them out onto a plate. They will be a nice, golden colour like this:

Make a dressing with 2 tablesp olive oil, 1 tablesp mandarin honey [or orange blossom honey or, failing this, ordinary honey with some orange juice] seasalt and black pepper. Toss the dressing with salad leaves to which you have added some clementine segments and serve with the chicken.

Serves 4.

Buon appetito.

Summer is coming so here is my favourite main course salad recipe:

Tagliata with cherries - 6th June 2014

The cherry harvest continues and the other day, I decided I wanted to experiment by using some with a tagliata [the sirloin cut]. I know all you Italians will be horrified again at such a mixture of sweet and savoury ingredients, which you claim you never use together, so please, look away now! 

There are also days when I long for some of the Middle Eastern flavours I used in my cooking in Britain and that is why I came up with the idea of using rosewater in the dressing.

The dish turned out well so, for the brave among you. this is what I did:

Ask the butcher for a 600 gr piece of tagliata [if you are in Italy] or sirloin if you are elsewhere.  A few hours before you want to serve the salad, lightly oil the tagliata on both sides, place it on a heated, ridged griddle pan and cook it on both sides to your liking. [I like mine medium rare for a salad.]  Take it out of the pan and leave it to cool on a cutting board. When it has cooled sufficiently, slice it diagonally into fairly wide strips and put in the fridge.

Destalk 500 gr  ready-washed spinach leaves. Tear them if they are very large and put them in the fridge. 

Cook 8 slices frozen, grilled aubergine as directed on the pack and put in the fridge when cool. [You can, of course, grill your own if you have time but let them dry on kitchen paper if you do.]

Wash, stone and halve about 20 cherries and chill these, too.

Now make the dressing:  In a small bowl, mix the following ingredients well with a fork:  5 tablesp olive oil, 3 teasp culinary rosewater, seasalt and black pepper to taste and a few chilli flakes.  Leave the dressing to chill in the fridge.

When you are ready to assemble the salad, put the spinach on a large serving platter, then add the aubergine slices and, on top of these, the tagliata slices, some torn fresh basil leaves and the cherries. Give the dressing a final, robust stir with a fork, then drizzle it over the salad and serve.

Serves 4.

Buon appetito

I hope you've enjoyed this selection from my recipe archives.  More coming soon!

HOT AND SPICY EASTER STEW

It's the time of year when Sicilians go in for lamb so here's a hot and spicy spezzatino I've invented, mainly becaiuse I wanted to use the tiny, round chilli peppers I found in the greengrocer's the other day:

In a wok or other deep, wide pan with a lid, heat 5 tablesp olive oil.  Add 1 kg lamb pieces [for spezzatino in Italy, otherwise a bit bigger than the usual cubes sold for casseroles in Britain, preferably bone-in]. When the pieces are browned on all sides, add 1 sliced white onion and a chopped garlic clove.  Continue cooking, stirring, until the onion is soft. Then add a small, sliced aubergine and the contents of 2 tins [400 gr each] of pomodorini [cherry tomatoes in their juice.].  You can use tins of chopped tomatoes if you can't get these, Add some chopped sage and sprigs of rosemary, seasalt, black pepper, 6 - 8 tiny chilli peppers or some chilli pepper flakes, 2 teasp of my favourite spice sumac and 200 ml water.  Add 2 - 3 large potatoes, sliced but not peeled, some cinnamon ground from a  cinnamon mill and just a few cumin seeds.  Put the lid on and simmer for 1 hour.

If you were able to get the tiny chillis, use a few more to garnish.

SICILY SCENE'S REVIEW OF 2015

The year that has just ended began, for me, in the worst possible way, with the loss of my darling Simi on January 8th. In the days and weeks that followed, there were several points when I thought I was going to go as well and of course, these days coming up to the anniversary of her death are also difficult.

But in February my Bertie-Pierrine, whom I love not as a substitute but in her own right, bounded into my life and we saved each other:

Other highlights of the year were visiting my new-found sister in Norwich, seeing Charles Aznavour live in concert in London and revisiting Cardiff, all of which I've written about here .

Elm Hill, Norwich, UK

It was also the year which marked the tenth anniversary of my move to Sicily and you can read about that here.

I was surprised, checking my blog stats tonight, to find that my most read blog post of 2015 was this Sabato Musicale  - I must have a lot of readers who are Annalisa fans and very welcome they are! The second most read post was the one I have linked to above about Simi's death.

My recipe of the year. among those I've created myself, is my Brit-Indian-Sicilian Shepherd's Pie:

I don't have a gadget of the year but I do have new [to me] uses for two old ones!  Both Mary Berry and Nigella suggest peeling ginger with a teaspoon in their latest books and I would like to thank them. It seems so obvious but I had never thought of it. Nigella recommends a microplane grater for grating citrus zest into dishes. I've had one for years but never realised how easy that would be!

My book of the year in English is The Dust That Falls from Dreams by Louis de Bernières and my book of the year in Italian is Giuseppino by Joe Bastianich.

Instead of the Italian logic prize this time, I am awarding an Italian scandal of scandals prize and it goes to the TV advert that horrified the nation in January because - are you ready? - it showed a MasterChef winner adding a stock cube to her caponata!  I am pleased to be able to report that this ability to be more scandalised by the use of stock cubes than by all the worst excesses of Italian politicians is alive and well, as a hapless would-be MasterChef Italia 5 contestant found out a week or so ago.  "Ci hai messo del dado?"- "You put a stock cube in?!" exclaimed a horrified Joe Bastianich and the ice-cold eyes of Chef Carlo Cracco turned icier than ever.

It was yet another sad year for migrants and tragedies have continued to happen, not only in the Mediterranean but on the land routes too. Italy's European partners continue to fail her and, consequently, all who are in need of a safe haven. You can find links to all my migration posts here.

My hopes for 2016 are a safe corridor for migrants and an end to migration tragedies. As always, I hope for peace and health for those I love and for all of you, wherever you are.

Happy New Year and thank you for reading Sicily Scene!

Buon anno e grazie di aver letto la Sicily Scene!

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.

UPDATED POLPETTE!

Last year, I published this recipe for lemon polpette which I had adapted from a magazine.  Well, now I have adapted the adaptation and I thought you might like to know about it!  I had three-quarters of an enormous red pepper to use up, you see, so I decided to add it to the polpette mixture:  I just chopped most of it up very finely in order to do so but left a little to cut into strips to strew among the polpette in the roasting tin. It looks pretty and if they char a bit, it adds to the appeal!

Oh, and I left the garlic out this time - because I didn't have any.

This adaptation worked very well and I'll definitely continue making the recipe this way.

Tip:  If you find that the mixture doesn't quite bind together with these measures [Italian eggs are bigger than UK ones] just add a little lemon juice.

FERRAGOSTO SURPRISE

Because I created this recipe a few days before this year's Ferragosto holiday and because it's a bit unusual, I am calling it Ferragosto surprise. And yes, Italian readers, you'd better look away again as it's certainly not traditional and mixes sweet and savoury ingredients [which you say you never do but I know differently!]

Ever since I read that an ice cream maker was using Himalayan pink salt in a creation for last month's ice cream festival in Catania, I've wanted to use it myself in an ice cream or semifreddo. [Himalayan pink salt is very popular here, particularly in restaurants.]  I was wondering what other ingredients I could use in such a recipe  and how I could serve it when I saw these tiny peppers in the supermarket. [If you can't find mini-peppers, you could just cut interesting shapes from a large one and serve the semifreddo on top.]   The gelato became a semifreddo as it is much easier to make. It also behaves better!

This is what I did:

Ferragosto surprise

3 eggs, separated
100 gr sugar
200 ml whipping cream [panna da montare if you are in Italy]
250 gr mascarpone
10 grinds Himalayan pink salt
Half a red pepper, finely chopped
about 12 mini-peppers

Line an ice cream container with clingfilm, leaving an overlap.
Whip the egg yolks with the sugar and set aside.
In another bowl, whip the egg whites to soft peaks.
In a third bowl, whip the cream to soft peaks.
Combine the three mixtures in the largest bowl, add the mascarpone, chopped pepper and Himalayan salt and mix well with a metal spoon.
Scoop into the lined container, bring the overlap up to cover, put the lid on and freeze overnight.
When you are almost ready to serve, make a cut in the mini-peppers as though to halve them, but don't cut right through. Leave the stems on so that people can use them to pick the peppers up.  Use a teaspoon to fill the peppers with the semifreddo and close them a little,  Once filled, they will "hold" in a container in the fridge for an hour or two.

I nearly decorated with some basil leaves but remembered that Chef Carlo Cracco would say that if an ingredient isn't an integral part of the recipe, you shouldn't use it as a garnish. I think it's good advice.  If I could have got a few whole flakes of the salt out of the grinder to garnish, I would have done so, but it didn't seem worth breaking the grinder to do it. Anyway, decorate as you like!

These quantities will make more than you need for filling the peppers but you can refreeze the rest.

Buon appetito.

WATERMELON APPETISER

Italians, look away now! I know anguria is usually kept for the end of a meal but why not try to be different for once?

Here is a very quick and cooling watermelon appetiser which also looks pretty. You will have to assemble it just moments before serving, but you can cut the watermelon and keep it in the fridge, grill the courgettes [if not using frozen ones] and make your own pesto [if you wish] and chill it in advance.

First cut as many watermelon wedges as you have guests plus a few extra. Leave the rind on what will be the outside edge when the pieces are on the serving plate, as they will be easier to pick up that way. [In Italy, a greengrocer will cut the watermelon for you.]  With a very small coffee spoon, scoop out all the seeds you can see, on both sides.  Arrange the slices on a plate and top each one with a slice of grilled courgette, then add about 2 teasp pesto. [I do usually make my own but this time I didn't and sorry, Masterchef UK people - I don't do quenelles.] Top with a datterino tomato or half a cherry tomato and decorate with basil leaves.

Buon appetito.