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!

AUTUMN CASSEROLE

In 2003 I lived, for one month, in Prague. I loved the tiny apartment I rented there and I bought a Czech cookbook and cooked my way through it. One of the techniques I learned there was to thicken casseroles with bread and every now and then, I still do this. 

At Halloween, having found, for the first time, a butternut squash here, I decided to add it to a Prague-style casserole. The Sicilian ingredients are 'strattu [tomato paste], pomegranate seeds, the orange peel and Mediterranean cardoncello [king trumpet] mushrooms:

First of all, cut a long strip of peel from an orange and put it on a plate in the microwave for about 1 minute on medium. Put aside till needed.

Heat 6 tablesp olive oil in a large, wide pan and in it brown 1 kg cubed beef for casseroles or spezzatino. Add 1 chopped white onion and a chopped clove of garlic and swirl these around with the beef until they are browned too. Then add the peeled and chopped squash and brown this. 

Now add 1 tablesp 'strattu, seasalt to taste and a few grindings of mixed peppercorns plus 170 gr roughly sliced mushrooms, a handful of chopped parsley and some sprigs of fresh thyme. Add the strip of orange peel and 568 ml water [1 UK pint]. Bring the mixture to simmer, cover and leave for 1 hour, stirring once or twice.

Add 4 slices of bread, crusts removed and cut into squares. [This can be brown or white - it doesn't matter] and stir till dissolved.

Finally add the seeds of 1 pomegranate, discard the orange peel [if you can find it] and serve.

This is serious comfort food and will serve 4 - 6. 

Buon appetito!  Dobrou chuť!

Me in Halloween mood

PASTA AL FORNO CON ZUCCA

When I need comfort food, as I often do these days, pasta al forno is high on my list of possibilities. At the weekend, I decided I wanted to create a rather more seasonal pasta al forno, so I added pumpkin and a bit of orange zest. Here's the recipe:

Pasta al forno con zucca

First, discard the peel from about a quarter of a small pumpkin and slice the flesh. You'll need about 300 gr. Cook in salted water till the pieces are tender then drain and set aside.

Heat 4 tablsp olive oil in a large, wide pan and add 75 gr pancetta cubes [cubetti di pancetta dolce if you are in Italy]. Cook until browned, then add 1 chopped red onion and cook till the onion is soft. Add 500 gr mixed minced meat - I used a mixture of minced pork and beef but there is nothing to stop you using all beef if you want to. Cook, stirring, to lightly brown the meat.  Add 300 gr sliced mushrooms, the pumpkin pieces and the grated rind of 1 lovely Sicilian orange.  Add a dollop [or dessertspoon] of 'strattu, 200 gr passata and 200 ml water. Season, stir, turn the heat down and simmer for about 40 mins., coming back to stir from time to time. This is your ragù.

Pre-heat the oven to 160 C.

Meanwhile, cook 400 gr rigatoni or tortiglioni for the time indicated on the pack. Drain the pasta and wait for the ragù.

Oil a large ceramic or Pyrex-style roasting dish and add a layer of pasta, a layer of ragù, a layer of 125 gr crumbled ricotta, another layer of pasta, another 125 gr ricotta and finish with a layer of ragù. Sprinkle a handful of fresh breadcrumbs [pane grattugiato] over the top, along with about 1 tablesp of grated Grana Padano, Parmesan or Ragusano cheese. Cook in the oven for 15 mins.

This turned out to be one of the nicest pasta al forno dishes I have ever made so buon appetito!

It will serve at least 4 people generously.

SPEZZATINO DI FINE ESTATE

I wouldn't say there's exactly an autumn chill in the air, but it is a little cooler, Sicilians are beginning to return to the city and I am starting to want spezzatini. Last night I decided I wanted a spicy spezzatino, too, so I invented this chicken one:

Spezzatino di pollo di fine estate

Serves 4 generously

2 oz butter and 2 tablesp olive oil
1 large white onion, sliced
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast [if you are in Italy] or 2 if you are in the UK [where each half is sold as "one breast"], cut into bite-sized pieces. [In Italy, just ask the butcher to cut it for spezzatino.]
1 dried red chilli pepper [or 2 very small ones]
4 plum tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and chopped
1 tablesp 'strattu or tomato concentrate
570 ml [1 pint] water
250 gr peeled aubergines in oil, drained. [People make a preserve of these here but we can buy them, too.]
3 peppers of different colours, sliced
500 gr potatoes [no need to peel unless you want to] sliced
seasalt and black pepper
2 teasp sugar

In a wide, high-sided pan, soften the onion in the butter and oil.  Add the chicken pieces and dried chilli pepper and cook, stirring, till the chicken is lightly browned on all sides. Add the tomatoes, aubergines, 'strattu, some seasoning and the water, stir everything and continue to cook for about 10 mins. Now add the peppers and potatoes, give everything a good stir, turn the heat down and continue to cook, with the lid on, for 45 mins. 

Heat the oven to 180C and, at the end of the 45 mins, take the chilli pepper out and transfer the mixture to a Pyrex-type roasting dish. Sprinkle the sugar over the top and put the dish in the oven for 20 mins. [Keep an eye on it during this time.]

Serve with a green salad.

Buon appetito.

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.

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.

CHICKEN WITH AUBERGINE

I adapted this recipe from a magazine:

4 drumsticks and 4 chicken thighs, bone in
2 aubergines
olive oil
4 slices pancetta, rind removed and cut into small pieces
2 cloves garlic, chopped
about 5 fl oz white wine
a bottle of passata or homemade tomato sauce
1 tablesp 'strattu [tomato paste]
2 tablesp chopped parsley
coarse seasalt, freshly ground black pepper

Cut the aubergines into fairly thick chunks, then fry them in oil in a deep pan or wok. [Don't bother salting them first as they will be more difficult to fry.] Drain them with a slotted spoon and place on kitchen paper on a plate. Now in a clean, wide pan or wok, fry the chopped garlic and pancetta in about 3 tablesp olive oil. Throw in the chicken joints and brown them on all sides. Chuck the wine over them and let it evaporate. Add the passata, 'strattu, aubergines and seasoning. Stir well, cover the pan and leave to simmer for about 50 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add a little water if necessary. Add the parsley and cook for another 10 minutes.

Buon appetito.

ANSWER TO "WHAT IN SICILY?" - 23

There were some very creative guesses for yesterday's Sicilian object and now I'll put you all out of your misery. It's a container in which to make pasta dough or bread, so that the flour doesn't go all over the place. [I could do with one myself!] Sometimes, at large gatherings, these containers are used to serve the pasta as well:

Don't worry, folks - I thought one was a pigs' trough when I first came to Sicily! [That shows what a countrywoman I am!]

Some of you were thinking of the kind of trays used for drying tomatoes to make 'strattu [tomato paste] but these are shallower:

Right, everybody happy? On we go!

TOMATO SAUCE MAKING

When James was here last summer, he would look at my lovely tomato-squashing machine, shake his head and declare that he dreaded the day when I would get it out and start sauce-making in earnest! Well, for various reasons - vergogna [shame on me] - I didn't get around to it last year so now I'm having to make up for that. This post is for Omnium, who wants the recipe, M , who wants to know what I'm making with the 3 crates of tomatoes I bought, Leslie who wanted to know about the process and, of course, all my other lovely readers.

One of my favourite cooks is Keith Floyd, because he likes a bit of "bunging" and "throwing" and does not always give precise quantities and times, knowing that much depends on your oven or hob's temperament as well as your own, the size of the ingredients you have got, your common sense and even the climate in which you are cooking. So I use his recipe as a basis and then very much do my own thing. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for the precision of the blessed Delia: in fact, thinking that a CBE [a British honour] was a bit miserly of Her Britannic Majesty, I nearly started a "Make Delia a Dame" group on facebook, only I belong to a "Procrastination" group on there as well, so I procrastinated. And now I'm digressing [maybe I should start a "Digression" group?] so let's get to work:


Rosa sorting tomatoes.

First of all, you need all saucepans on deck to bring the tomatoes to the boil:



Rosa and I processed about a third of the tomatoes in the crates on Friday, so we will need a couple more sessions. For the purpose of giving quantities here, let's assume that you have about 4 kilos of tomatoes. Throw all of these into water in the biggest pans you have got and bring to the boil. They should just soften. Rinse them in a large colander under cold water [be careful!] and then chuck them into the machine. [If you don't have one of these I suggest you process half this quantity at a time. You will have to get the peel off by hand and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon. Some people can achieve this result using a mouli but I have not been successful.] Put the juice back into pans.


I make with the machine.


It requires mathematical precision to line everything up for minimal mess!



The sauce is back in the pans.

In a small pan, heat 2 tablesp olive oil and add a large, chopped onion and a fat, chopped clove of garlic. Fry until they are softened and transparent, then add them to the juice in the pans. [Sometimes I fry a finely chopped red chilli pepper as well to make a spicy sauce.] Into each pan of sauce chuck a few chopped basil leaves, some oregano if you like [I do] 2 teasp brown sugar, a few drops balsamic or red wine vinegar plus seasalt and freshly ground black pepper. Oh, nearly forgot: I like to add a dollop of 'strattu [tomato paste] to each pan:



Simmer for about an hour or until you have a beautifully thick tomato sauce. The Sicilian women bottle theirs and go through that sterilising process with the bottles in a pan lined with and separated by newspaper or cardboard but I freeze my sauce in varying quantities.



You may like to look at this post, where you can see some photos of 'strattu being made.

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!

MELTINGLY TENDER

One of the things I have had to get used to in food shopping is that when I ask for meat for a spezzatino [casserole / stew] it is cut in far bigger pieces than you would expect to buy in Britain. At first I used to ask the butcher to cut it a little smaller , or do so myself at home, but now, unless I am cooking something British or northern European, I go along with it. At an Italian meal, you will have possibly had antipasti, and almost certainly pasta first so it is no surprise that only a little of the main meat dish is initially served, in its sauce.

This stufato di manzo [beef stew] again from the Cucina del Sole book, is first cooked on the hob with flavourings, which include red wine and a spice bag of cinnamon sticks and 10 cloves, and then in the oven for about 4 hours, by the end of which time your living space will smell heavenly! [I have never understood what is wrong with having the aroma of good cooking pervading your home and why some people do everything to try and disguise it!] Last night I found I had committed the ultimate Italian "sin" and run out of pelati [tins of tomatoes] so I just added a couple of dollops of my favourite ingredient instead. The result was still Sicilian comfort food at its best!

AND FOR SUPPER...

This is a Greek dish which I have adapted to the ingredients available here. My mother used to make it for me as comfort food, and I think it is definitely in that category:

Chicken with Tomato Rice

2 large skinned, boned chicken breasts, cut into pieces

1 clove garlic, halved

'strattu [tomato paste, not purée]

coarse seasalt and freshly ground black pepper

4 oz unsalted butter

8 oz long-grain rice

Heat the oven to 160 C.

Rub the chicken pieces all over with the cut sides of the garlic and then with tomato paste. Place them in an oiled roasting dish. Season with the pepper and salt then dot with the butter. Bake for 45 minutes.

Cook the rice till just done in c. 2 pints water, then drain.

Bring a further 1 pint of water to the boil then add it to the chicken with the rice. Make sure the chicken pieces are on top of the rice.

Cover with foil and bake for a further 30 minutes.

Take the dish out of the oven and replace the foil with kitchen paper towels [which will absorb excess moisture - yes, they will!] Let it stand for 15 minutes before serving.

You only need some good bread and a salad to accompany this.

THE WELSHCAKES LIMONCELLO TOMATO SAUCE FACTORY

This is a one-woman production line so here's how it works:

1. Marshal your troops in the form of pans. I don't have the enormous pans that most Italian women with big families do, so a little improvisation is necessary.

2. Check over the fruit.

3. Blanch the tomatoes till cracks appear in the skins. Rinse them in cold water.

4. [The fun part!] Get out new miracle machine and proceed to use. As you see, it did not render the job entirely messless, but it was a lot less messy than getting the skins off with my fingers and then using a teaspoon to get all the pips out! I did such a happy dance when I saw the skins and pips slide down that chute on the side!

5. Spend half an hour working out how to disassemble the machine to clean it [instruction booklets being for wimps].

6. Put all the lovely passata into your largest pan and follow your favourite tomato sauce recipe. I use Keith Floyd's but add oregano and a little 'strattu. Sometimes I put some of the pulp into another pan and add a little chopped red chilli pepper to it, so that I'll have some piccante sauce to hand as well but I didn't today.

7. Simmer for as long as it takes to produce a beautiful, thick, bright red, summer-scented sauce. [I find an hour and a half to 2 hours is about right.] The Sicilians bottle theirs but I freeze mine in small quantities. I processed about 6 kg of tomatoes this afternoon but a friend has turned 600 kg into sauce or 'strattu during this past week! I kid you not!

MAKING 'STRATTU

I arrived at the house of friends Marco and Giovanna this morning to find them making 'strattu [tomato extract] on an almost industrial scale, which is not at all unusual in these parts at this time of year: the tomatoes are first boiled, then passed through the enormous machine Marco and Giovanna have for extracting the pulp and then the skins go back through for a second pressing. This is the stage Giovanna had reached when I arrived. The purée is then salted and I was interested to notice that a little salicylic acid was added as a preservative. [I had not read of this being added before.] Then the 'strattu is spread out on shallow trays to dry in the sun for several days and it has to be stirred often. Only when it is leathery will it be deemed fit to bottle and this lot, made from the contents of about 4 enormous crates of tomatoes such as the ones I photographed on Thursday, will make only about 2 kg of the paste. In the last picture you can see that the liquid content of the pulp has already started to reduce, after a few hours in the sun.

SPEZZATINO ALLA TOSCANA

The weather has turned windy again so last night I cheered myself up by cooking this Tuscan beef stew. The beef, after being browned in olive oil, is just simmered slowly with garlic, rosemary, a generous amount of good red wine [for it is true that a wine not fit for drinking is not fit for cooking with either] and what is becoming my favourite ingredient, 'strattu [tomato paste]. Authentically the dish should, I read, contain carrots and celery too, but it turned out very well cooked this way.

CAPONATA

A friend gave me these home-grown and salted capers, so I just had to make caponata! Besides, a commenter has asked for the recipe. And a third reason for making it is that there is something unmistakeably Mediterranean about the perfume that results from having a dish made with aubergines and peppers bubbling away on the hob.

In Sicilian Food, Mary Taylor Simeti tells us that the dish was probably seagoing food because the vinegar in it means that it keeps well. In the recipe she gives, she includes some chopped, toasted almonds and the optional addition of some cocoa powder. I add neither of these, but almonds do marry well with peppers, so you may like to try it. Some recipes say use tomato sauce [which is what I do - I make my own using Keith Floyd's recipe in Floyd on Italy] whilst others tell you to sieve a can of tomatoes. I should think you could get away with using passata, but I would then thicken it with some tomato paste and maybe use the almonds. [I add a bit of 'strattu anyway, though it's not an authentic ingredient for this dish.] I do stone the olives [and you can use green ones instead of black or a mixture if you prefer] but as the elongated peppers available here don't have much membrane, I don't bother cutting it out. Here is the recipe:,

1 aubergine

c. 5 fl. oz olive oil

1 onion, sliced

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 stick celery, sliced

2 red peppers, sliced [or 1 red and 1 orange pepper]

c. 1 pint good tomato sauce

goodly dollop of tomato paste

2 tblsp red wine vinegar

1 tblsp brown sugar

handful stoned black olives

c. 1 tblsp salted capers, rinsed and drained

Halve the aubergine, score the flesh and sprinkle with coarse seasalt. Put in a colander, jam a plate on top and leave for c. 30 mins. Rinse well and dry with kitchen paper. Cube the aubergine.

Heat the oil in a deep pan and add the onion, garlic, peppers and celery. Cook, stirring, for c. 5 minutes, then add the aubergine cubes.

Add the tomato sauce and paste, vinegar and sugar and cook for a few more minutes.

Add the capers and olives. Season.

Cover and simmer for about 25 minutes or until it is all squashy and looks and smells Mediterranean!

This dish is most often served here as an antipasto and in summer it is served chilled. You can serve it hot if you want to, but I prefer to serve it at room temperature. The dish freezes well and will serve 4 generously. In my opinion it needs no acompaniment other than some good, Sicilian pane arabo.

I had read about but never seen the rounder, paler type of aubergine in the last picture until I came to Sicily. Simeti tells us that this is the "Tunisian" variety but they are charmingly sold as violette here.

Still on a vegetable theme, today I found celeriac on sale for the first time since I've been in Sicily. I have missed céleri rémoulade and shall now be making up for it!