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.

GOING NUTTY

I enjoyed being taken out for dinner on Saturday and took advantage of the occasion to go nutty!

For the main course both my friend and I had fillet steak in a pistacchio sauce and there was an interesting contorno to share. Then my friend chose pannacotta with caramel whilst I couldn't resist one of my favourites, parfait alle mandorle [almond parfait] which was.....well, perfect!

PASTA AL FORNO VEGETARIANA

Let's have a recipe for a change: I love pasta al forno and it's on my list of the great comfort foods of the world.  Last weekend, I invented this vegetarian [but not vegan ] version:

Pasta al forno vegetariana

First of all, peel and cube 200 gr pumpkin.  Cook the cubes in salted water till tender. Drain and set aside.

Take 2 white and 2 green courgettes and slice 3 of them as thinly as you can [or do it in a food processor].  Grate the other courgette. Heat 4 tablesp olive oil in a wide pan and cook the courgettes, stirring, until they are tender. Now add a sliced white onion and a chopped clove of garlic and continue cooking everything until these, too, are tender. [Yes, I know this is the wrong way round for making a soffritto but it works!] When the onion and garlic have softened, add the pumpkin along with 300 gr sliced mushrooms, a little chopped parsley, seasoning and 400 gr passata.  Stir and cook on a low heat for 15 mins.

Meanwhile, heat the oven to 160 C and cook 400 gr rigatoni for the length of time indicated on the pack. Drain the pasta and oil a large, rectangular, Pyrex-style oven dish. Put a layer of pasta in the dish, followed by a layer of sauce and then a layer of thinly sliced provoleta or other pasta filata cheeese [about 10 slices]. Add another layer of pasta and finish with another layer of the sauce. Sprinkle some fresh breadcrumbs or pane grattugiato and some freshly grated Parmesan over the top.

Cook in the oven for 15 mins.

Buon appetito.

BAKED RADICCHIO

I owe the idea for this recipe to Corriere della Sera, but as usual, I've done my own thing with it: I couldn't get the very crisp type of radicchio mentioned, so I separated mine into leaves. I incorporated the honey with the oil and balsamic vinegar [as in the video] instead of adding it afterwards [as in the text], and I used rather more of it. The Corriere recipe uses pomegranate seeds, adding them when the radicchio is cooked, but as pomegranates are out of season here, my first idea was to use sultanas. However, I didn't have any and torrential rain prevented me from going out to get some, so I used the dried cranberries I did have, adding them before baking. 

Here's what I did:

Separate two medium-sized radicchi into leaves and wash ,drain and get them as dry as you can. Arrange in a roasting dish and drizzle a little olive oil over them. Make a dressing from 4 tablesp olive oil, 1 tablesp balsamic vinegar, 1 tablesp honey and seasoning to taste.  Pour over the radicchio leaves and toss it through. Add a few dried cranberries or sultanas and some pinenuts. Bake at 180 C for 15 mins. 

Serve at room temperature or chilled.

This makes an excellent accompaniment to grilled chicken.

A PEACEFUL LUNCH

A lovely, relaxing lunch with friends in peaceful surroundings on Sunday:

Crostini with foie gras -  ages since I'd had the latter!

And more with gorgonzola and caponata.

Iced sweet pepper soup

followed by herbed chicken served with asparagus, cime di rapa and potatoes.

A British friend had made lemon drizzle cake

and I'd made lemon semifreddo [again].

It wasn't warm enough, by Sicilian standards, to eat outside but it was warm enough to have the doors wide open and enjoy this oasis of peace.

Grazie a tutti gli amici!

BROCCOLETTI CON DATTERINI

In case you're wondering what I did with that kilo of broccoletti on Tuesday, here's the salad I invented!

Broccoletti con datterini

Trim, wash and drain 1 kg broccoletti. Bring a pasta pan of salted water to the boil and plunge the broccoletti in. Cook for about 3 mins, then drain. Heat 4 tablesp olive oil in a 2"-deep, wide pan or small wok and cook 1 crushed clove of garlic in it for 1 min. Add the broccoletti, season and stir round for about 5 mins. Add 20 or so datterini tomatoes or the smallest cherry tomatoes you can find and cook, stirring, until these just begin to soften - about 2 mins. Then add a few pinenuts, cook for a further minute and add the juice of 1 lemon. Give it all a good last stir then use a slotted spoon to transfer the mixture to a serving dish. A few shavings of Pecorino stagionato over the top and you're done. 

This is great served warm but it's also pretty good cold!  Serves 4 as a contorno.

UN' ABBONDANZA

... di broccoletti

SPRINGTIME RISOTTO

Even though it's started raining again, you can tell it's spring by the armfuls of Sicilian asparagus being sold from vegetable lorries at the roadside and the other day I decided I could resist no longer!  As there's still a bit of pumpkin to be had, I saw no reason for not combining these two favourite risotto vegetables of mine:

First, take a piece of pumpkin weighing about 250 gr and separate the flesh from the skin. Discard any fibrous bits and the seeds, then chop the flesh into small chunks. Now prepare the asparagus - as I said, I got about an armful! Wash it, then cut it diagonally about an inch below the spears. [Sicilian asparagus is very tender so you can leave more of the stalks on if you wish, or chop and add them separately.] Cook the pumpkin in a pan of salted, boiling water for about 10 mins or until tender, then add the asparagus for just a minute or two. Drain.

In a wide pan at least 2 inches deep, soften a chopped white onion in 4 tablesp olive oil.  As I've said before, there are only two secrets to making a good risotto: one is to use the right kind of rice and the other is contained in that word I would ban in other circumstances - pazienza. Once the onion is softened, add about 2 tablesp out of 500 gr arborio or other risotto rice and stir it around for about a minute. Have ready 1 litre of vegetable or chicken stock. [If you are awfully good and have had time you'll have made the stock from the asparagus stalks and some other vegetables but I'm not and I didn't.] Now add the rest of the rice and about one third of the stock. Stir everything, turn the heat down and go and do something useful such as checking that the world didn't end while you weren't on facebook. Come back, check that the rice has absorbed the stock and if it has, add another third. [If it hasn't, stir and wait!] Repeat the process, adding, with the final third of the stock, some seasoning - I decided it was time to use that nice lemon and mint flavoured seasalt I showed you a couple of weeks ago - some chopped fresh sage and the pumpkin and asparagus. Add the juice of a lemon, stir and let the rice absorb the last of the stock. Once it has and is al dente, stir in a couple of tablesp grated Parmesan, Grana Padano or Ragusano cheese and add a few knobs of butter. Stir vigorously and serve.

Serves 4 generously.

TAGLIATA SALAD WITH NECTARINES

Inspired by Nigella's tagliata recipe , I decided to make a salad using this kind of steak:

Tagliata salad with nectarines

500 gr sirloin [in Italy just tell your butcher you want to make tagliata]
3 nectarines [not soft ones]
20 datterini or cherry tomatoes
drained contents of a jar of grilled peppers, cut into smaller pieces if necessary
c. 500 gr rocket leaves, torn if they're large
12 mint leaves

Dressing
4 tablesp olive oil
1 tablesp red wine vinegar
1 tablesp runny honey
pinch chilli flakes
seasalt and a twist or two of black pepper

Start preparing this a few hours before you want to serve it:
First, oil the steak lightly on both sides and place on a heated, ridged griddle pan.  Cook for about 3 mins each side. Put the steak on a board and, when it has cooled a little, cut it diagonally into strips.
Let the griddle pan cool and wash it.
Next, slice the nectarines [not too thinly], drizzle the slices with olive oil [about 1 tablesp] and cook them on the griddle pan too, until stripes start to form on them. Lift the slices off the pan and leave to cool.
Halve the tomatoes.
When the steak and nectarines have cooled, put them in a large serving bowl with the tomatoes, rocket, peppers and mint leaves.  Leave it all in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.
Make the dressing by mixing all the ingredients together with a fork in a small bowl and leave that in the fridge too.
When you are ready to serve, whisk the dressing again with a fork,  pour it over the salad, toss it and there you are!

Serves four generously.

A PEA-SUPER SALAD!

"I eat my peas with honey,

I've done it all my life,

It makes the peas taste funny

but it keeps them on the knife!"

- Anon.

Well, I do eat my peas with honey when I put them in salads, and that's just what I did the other day when I felt like inventing a new chicken salad for the Sicilian summer:

Pea-super* salad

2 tablesp balsamic vinegar

8 chicken breast escalopes, pounded very thin by your butcher

300 gr fresh or frozen peas plus mint sprig

a goodly chunk of Sicilian peppered Pecorino, cubed

6 - 8 plums, sliced

100 gr pack rocket leaves

a handful of other salad leaves of your choice

a handful of basil leaves, torn

about 8 mint leaves, torn

2 tablesp olive oil

Dressing:

2 tablesp olive oil

1 tablesp honey

1 tablesp balsamic vinegar

seasalt and black pepper

Marinate the chicken escalopes in the balsamic vinegar for at least 2 hours, then lift the chicken pieces out and leave them on kitchen paper. 

Cook the peas in salted water with a sprig of mint until they are just tender, then rinse them in cold water.

Drain the peas and put them into a large salad bowl with the Pecorino, plums, salad  leaves and herbs. Put the bowl in the fridge.

Make the dressing by simply mixing all the ingredients together well and put this in the fridge, too.

Heat the oil on a ridged griddle pan and cook the chicken escalopes on it - about 1 minute per side. As they are cooked, lift them onto a plate and leave to cool.  When you can handle them, cut them into small pieces with a kitchen scissors and add to the salad bowl. Just before serving, give the dressing a final whisk with a fork, pour it over the salad ingredients and toss well.

Buon appetito.

*A pea-souper was a thick, London fog which was so polluted that it was said to look like yellow pea soup. I never saw one, as they were largely a product of an age of heavy industry and coal fires. However, when I was a child I heard my parents talking about them and  I thought the fog had got its name because it was so cold and miserable outside that it made you crave a warming pea soup!

WELCOMING AN OLD FRIEND

Celeriac was a good friend to me back in Wales, where I found a salad based on it an excellent standby for all sorts of entertaining and for myself!  What's even better about it is that you can make the salad, dressing and all, a day in advance.  Sadly, I rarely find this vegetable in Sicily but when I do, I make the most of it.  On Saturday I found some and below is my celeriac salad recipe. I now perk it up with some chilli pepper and add carrot as a Sicilian touch:

Celeriac salad

Slice 1 large, peeled celeriac or 2 smaller ones in a processor and tip it into a serving dish. Add some grated carrot or carrot batons and a chopped red chilli pepper.  Make up a dressing of 5 tablesp olive oil, 1 tablesp white wine vinegar, 1 tablesp Dijon mustard, some dried oregano and seasalt and black pepper to taste. Mix the dressing well with a fork and then pour over the salad, stirring.  Cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.

HAIRY FRIENDS

The other day my Welsh friend Liz asked me how to cook artichokes. I am no expert and freely admit that if they are an ingredient rather than the main focus of the dish, I use antipasti ones or the frozen artichoke hearts that we can buy in Italy.

Preparing artichokes is a pain but, since coming to Sicily, I have learnt that if you have to do it you have got to mean business and be ruthless with the things!  The clearest advice I've found on the preparation stage is from Marcella Hazan.

That said, artichokes in Sicily are often cooked in ways that require very little preparation because all the diners are going to do is suck the delicious juices that will emerge from between the leaves:  the cook just cuts off the stalks, prises open the leaves as best he or she can - bashing the artichokes all around with a rolling pin helps! - then sprinkles seasalt over the vegetables and brushes them with olive oil.  The artichokes are then grilled slowly or roasted in the oven.  If you are roasting them in the oven, stand them close together in a roasting tin so that they don't fall over. Cook them at 200 C for about 50 mins. When they are good and dark, cut off any charred leaves and serve.  Each diner will probably demolish several of them and there will be messy piles of leaves on their plates but you do want them to enjoy the feast, don't you?  Some friends stuff a mixture of breadcrumbs and finely chopped herbs and ham, also moistened with olive oil, between the leaves as a variation.  Sometimes the finely chopped stalks are added to this mixture.

One of my own most successful recipes using artichokes is this pasta al forno.

SAUSAGE STEW WITH A KICK

The recipe for a sausage and vegetable stew in the November edition of the Conad supermarket chain's Bene Insieme magazine turned out well:  the stew contains mushrooms, carrots, tomato pulp, rosemary [only I didn't have any so flavoured it with sage], onion, vegetable stock and, as you would expect, sausages. I added some pumpkin and potatoes [unpeeled] because I had them. The recipe tells you to add some white wine and rum but I didn't have any rum and can't stand the taste of it in any case; I did, however, have some Calvados in the cupboard so chucked a drop or four of that in. I found it did the trick!

JEWELLED RISOTTO

Risotto al radicchio is a traditional dish of Verona and they make it with pancetta up there.  My version uses what I had in the house last night and if you saw yesterday's post, you'll know that I have a kitchen full of pomegranates!  This is what I did:

Finely chop 2 shallots and soften them in a wide pan in 4 tablesp olive oil, adding a handful of pinenuts after about 2 mins. Add the finely chopped leaves of 1 radicchio - I chopped mine in the processor - and stir everything for about 5 mins. Add 500 gr arborio rice and stir that around too, then add a glass of white wine to the pan, stirring.  Have ready 1 litre vegetable stock, add about a quarter of this and stir.  Turn the heat down and let it absorb, then add another quarter and repeat the process until the stock is used up. It will take about 20 mins.  At the end, season to taste and add the seeds of a pomegranate, then add about 100 gr grated parmesan, grana or ragusano cheese. Stir well, then take the pan off the heat, add a few knobs of butter and stir these in too.  The pomegranate seeds will become mouth-burningly hot so let it stand for 3 mins or so, then serve in bowls.

Serves 4 generously.

Buon appetito!

TURKEY POLPETTONE WITH ROCKET

Remember the polpettone with spinach that I showed you a couple of weeks ago? Well, I decided to adapt the recipe and make it "mine" by using rocket instead of spinach as I thought it would give a nice peppery flavour and it has the advantage of not needing pre-cooking. I left out the chilli pepper flakes, added peppers to the polpettone as well as the sauce and made some other adjustments too: 

OK, let's start with the sauce: finely chop 1 medium white onion, 2 cloves of garlic and a red pepper. Soften these in 2 tablsp olive oil, then add the contents of a 400 gr can of pomodorini [cherry tomatoes] or of chopped tomatoes. Stir and add the contents of a 200 gr box of passata too. Stir well, season and then add 75 gr washed and chopped rocket, the leaves of 2 sprigs of thyme, a little dried oregano and about 4 torn basil leaves. Now add 12 fresh datterini or cherry tomatoes, squash them a bit with the back of your mixing spoon as you stir the mixture and then let it all cook over a low flame for about 30 mins. Turn off the heat. 

Now for the polpettone: in a large bowl, mix a tablesp of the tomato sauce with 500 gr minced turkey, 1 finely chopped red pepper and 1 finely chopped yellow pepper, 1 beaten egg, another 75 gr washed and chopped rocket and about 8 tablesp pangrattato [or fine fresh breadcrumbs]. Line a baking tray with foil and on top of this, dampened baking paper and here's the fun part! Oil your hands and form the mixture into a long, oval loaf shape. Plonk it onto the tray, wrap the baking paper round it as if it were a sweet and tie the ends with cooking string - it should look a bit like a Christmas cracker. Cook at 180 C for about 50 mins. You can serve this at room temperature with some of the cooled sauce but it will firm up and be easier to slice if you refigerate it for a few hours and serve it cold with the sauce chilled.

This time I remembered to serve the sauce in yellow pepper shells!

POLPETTONE DI TACCHINO

I enjoyed making this polpettone filled with minced turkey breast and spinach at the weekend.  You use some of the sauce, which is made with tomatoes, onion, garlic, red pepper, thyme, a little more spinach and red chilli pepper flakes, to moisten the mixture. [I speeded up the sauce making process by substituting a can of pomodorini - peeled cherrry tomatoes - and the contents of a small box of passata for fresh tomatoes.] For those of you who are in Italy, the recipe can be found in the April 25th edition of Donna Moderna.  The illustration in the magazine shows the sauce served in yellow pepper shells but I couldn't get any yellow peppers last week so that will be for next time.  This dish is good served hot or cold.

FRIDAY RISOTTO

Friday night is "comfort food night" and for me, the two great comfort foods of the world are mashed potato and risotto.  As I had a supply of the Sicilian asparagus I showed you yesterday, this evening it had to be asparagus risotto.

These quantities will serve four as a starter:

What really crowns a nice, creamy risotto is a little butter stirred in at the end and for this one I made some lemon butter.  All you do is add some grated lemon rind to about 125 gr unsalted butter, wrap the butter in foil and let it firm up again in the fridge while you prepare the risotto. 

Trim the hardest stalks from c. 350 gr asparagus, then cut it into small pieces [best done with a scissors]. Sicilian asparagus has small, thin spears which you will lose if you try to keep them separate from the cut-up stalks, as some recipes suggest, so just rinse all the asparagus together, then throw it into a pan of boiling, salted water and simmer until it is just tender - 15 - 20 minutes.  

Meanwhile, chop a small white onion or half a medium one finely with a stick of celery. [Sicilian celery is very thin so you won't need much if you are using another kind.]  Drain the asparagus and set aside.

Have 500 gr arborio or other risotto rice ready and in a jug, have ready 150 ml white wine and 550 ml water. In a wide pan, heat 2 tablesp olive oil and add the onion, celery and just a little of the rice.  Stir it all around but don't let the onion brown. After a couple of minutes add the rest of the rice, all the asparagus, seasoning to taste and enough of the water and wine mixture to just cover the mixture.  Over a medium heat, stir until the rice has absorbed the liquid, then add half the remaining liquid and simmer till the rice has absorbed this too. Now add the last of the liquid and simmer till absorbed.  [The whole absorption process will probably take about 20 mins.]

Off the heat, quickly stir in a generous couple of tablesp of grated parmesan, grana or ragusano cheese.  Spoon the risotto into serving bowls, add a generous knob of the lemon butter to each and you're done!  

As I've said many times before, there is no secret to preparing a good risotto.  In my opinion, you just need:

- the right kind of rice

- a wide but not too deep pan

- the patience to add the liquid gradually 

- to remember that Italians like their risotto "wetter" than the Brits

- that all-important butter to stir in at the end!

This dish was just what I needed after a week at the chalk face!

ANOTHER SIGN OF SPRING

Sicilian wild asparagus

PASTA AL FORNO CON ZAFFERANO

I found the recipe for this dish in a little booklet that came free with a sachet of saffron and was pleasantly surprised at how well it literally turned out, moulded, as it was, in nothing more sophisticated than a loaf tin. The sauce is of  carrots, shallot, Sicilian celery and zucchini, all cooked in a little oil and mixed with the saffron, grated grana or ragusano cheese and some Béchamel.  Ziti pasta are used and you are supposed to cut them to the length of your loaf tin after cooking but luckily my loaf tin was just the right size!