SPEZZATINO DI PASQUA

Lamb, artichokes and asparagus: those are the savoury foods most associated with Easter in Sicily. I've been wanting to cook artichokes plus a lamb dish for days, but with limited time, I decided to combine them. I added the sumac, one of my favourite spices, to give it some punch. It's not Sicilian but it should grow here. [I've read that it does but have never found any.] Here's what I did:

Spezzatino di Pasqua

6 tablesp olive oil

1 kg lamb pieces for stew: in Italy, ask for the spezzatino cut. The pieces will be very small, with quite a lot of bone on them, but this does add to the flavour.

6 small onions, chopped [I like cipolle borettane, from Emilia-Romagna.]

2 garlic cloves, chopped

300 gr frozen artichoke hearts, thawed

1 large yellow pepper, cut into not-too-thin strips

1 Sicilian or unwaxed lemon, quartered 

4 - 6 potatoes, unpeeled and cubed

2 teasp sumac

coarse seasalt and black pepper

0.25 litre white wine

sprigs of rosemary and about 6 fresh sage leaves

Heat oil in a deep, wide pan or wok and add the onions and garlic. Cook until golden. Add the lamb and brown on all sides. Then add the artichoke hearts, lemon, yellow pepper, seasoning, sumac and herbs and continue to cook for about 10 mins., stirring well.  Add the white wine and potatoes, stir well and bring to simmer. Simmer for about 1 hour with the lid on, stirring occasionally. Do not be tempted to add more liquid as the vegetables will produce their own.

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

Buon appetito.

POLLO AI FICHI D'INDIA

It's that time of year again and here come the prickly pears!  In their honour, I invented this recipe at the weekend. The idea of using fruit in a savoury dish has shocked some of my Italian friends again but the recipe worked really well. It's not for those of you who are sensitive to seeds, though.

Pollo ai fichi d'India - Chicken with prickly pears

If you're in Italy, ask your butcher to cut half a chicken breast a fettine. If you're in the UK, ask him to slice a boned, skinless chicken breast thinly. 

Peel three prickly pears in the way that a Sicilian taught me:  put the fruit on a plate or board and hold it steady on its side with a fork. Top and tail it. Still holding it steady with the fork, cut a lengthwise slit in the skin with a knife and then cut round the fruit.  You have to be careful not to touch the skins with your hands as you can still get a nasty prickle even if you buy the fruit dethorned.  Keep holding it with the fork to slice it.

Heat 4 tablesp olive oil in a wide pan and brown the chicken fillet slices lightly. Add 350 gr button mushrooms or sliced mushrooms and 250 ml white wine.  Stir everything and then add the drained contents of a 190 gr jar of small artichokes in oil. Set aside three or four of your tidiest prickly pear slices for a garnish later and add the rest of the slices to the pan. Season the mixture with seasalt to taste and a few twists from a peppermill of mixed peppercorns. Cover the pan and cook for about 50 mins over a low heat.

Just before the end of cooking, take the pan off the heat and add 200 ml panna di cucina [Italian cooking cream, which is thinner than British single cream].  Stir it in well and put the pan back on the heat for a couple of minutes, still stirring.

Garnish the dish with the reserved prickly pear slices.

Buon appetito.

A SIMPLE SUNDAY LUNCH

Well......

My favourite - roast artichokes!

It wouldn't have been a Modican lunch without scacce.

There had to be arancini, too!

Did you think there wouldn't be pasta?

And here comes the main course!

Now for a nice siesta......

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.

OF EATING AND BEING MERRY

Christmas really began for me on the evening of the 21st, when the Modican "foreign legion" held their annual multilingual carol service.  We were a little quieter than usual, having lost a dear member, but we did our best to sing out for her.

Chiara had decided that it was more important than ever to spend pleasant times together, so another gathering took place at her house on Saturday morning.  This is where the serious eating began!  Christmas just isn't Christmas without hot mince pies, and there were plenty of those:

I had made a batch of Welshcakes with cranberries:

Chiara had made a lovely Christmas cake

and Roberta had made these yummy, nut-flavoured "thins":

 There was homemade shortbread, too

and it wouldn't have been a Sicilian "tea" if someone hadn't brought along some ice cream!

Later on Saturday, we held a little Christmas party for students over at English Matters.  Our clever secretary, Martina, made these exquisite chocolates

and this was my go at making Nigella's chocolate Christmas cake:

 These delightful creations came from a Modican pasticceria:

Then suddenly it was Christmas Eve, which I again spent with Linda, Chiara and  family.

As I don't eat fish, I had to pass on these salmon appetisers but I'm sure they were delicious:

Don't you love the way these little appetisers are cut?

There was calabrese salad

 and it is traditional to serve several kinds of focaccia:

I hadn't made pumpkin bread for a while, so prepared some of that to take along:

I had to pass on the salmon with beignets too, but I loved the presentation:

Then there was one of my favourite Christmas Eve dishes, roasted artichokes:

Chiara had made another Christmas cake and it was scrumptious:

And finally, there was warm panettone:

"See you later this morning", we called as we parted and within a few hours we all met at Grazia's for Christmas lunch.

There was pasta, of course:

Linda provided the British elements and very good they were:

I had to pass again on these:

Here comes Grazia's pollo ripieno, with a garnish to gladden this blogger's heart:

And where there is Grazia, there will be excellent homemade pane condito:

I had made my standby semifreddo di marrons glacés. This time I added a little more cocoa powder for the colour and a few drops of cinnamon liqueur.  [The recipe for this is in Il Cucchiaio d'Argento.]

One of my young friends had made this pretty lemon cake and served it with justifiable pride:

The parents of Grazia's youngest guests had hoped that this chocolate crib, made and sold by a charitable organisation, would be opened and consumed on New Year's Eve.  Needless to say, it wasn't to be:

Then there was more warm panettone:

We all felt very lucky to have been able to celebrate Christmas together this year.

MIDDLE EASTERN SICILIAN LAMB

The sumac bush grows in Sicily but I have never, to my knowledge, seen one and I do not know if it is the culinary kind that is grown.  [I'm pretty useless at plants so unless it grew labelled, I wouldn't recognise it!]  Anyway, I have never found the spice here and miss cooking with it but sometimes friends are kind enough to send some from the UK.  Armed with a fresh supply and with a nod to the Sicilian tradition of combining lamb with artichokes, here is the dish I've invented for this Easter:

Middle Eastern Sicilian Lamb


4 tablesp olive oil
2 sticks celery, chopped
1 medium white onion, chopped
a little flour
2 heaped teasp powdered sumac
1 kg lamb in large pieces, bone in
8 artichoke hearts [I used the frozen ones that are sold here as it saves a lot of trouble and swearing]
300 ml dry white wine
125 gr dried apricots, chopped [best done with a scissors]
seasoning to taste
a handful of fresh herbs such as rosemary, sage and thyme

Heat the olive oil in a wide pan and soften the onion and celery in it.  Spread a good handful of flour on a plate, mix in the sumac and dip the lamb pieces in the mixture.  Immediately drop the lamb into the pan and brown on all sides.  Add the white wine, 300 ml water, the artichokes [not defrosted] and any remaining flour.  Stir well and season, taking care not to add too much pepper because of the sumac.  Add the apricots and, last but not least, a handful of fresh herbs - I used rosemary as I think it's a must with lamb, sage and thyme.  Cover the pan and simmer the dish for 50 mins.

Serves four.

Buon appetito e buona Pasqua.

THE MOST VERSATILE CHICKEN SALAD - 2011 VERSION

Tonight I bring you the 2011 version of the summer dish that started out as a chicken and artichoke salad, then became in turn a chicken and grilled courgettes salad, and a chicken with fresh and grilled vegetables salad.  

This time I've gone back to marinating the chicken escalopes in balsamic vinegar before griddling them and I have added the contents of a jar of grilled yellow peppers, a jar of artichoke hearts and a jar of chiodini mushrooms.   Oh, I almost forgot - I added some salad leaves too!  As usual, I made up a dressing from 3 - 4 tablesp olive oil, 1 tablesp balsamic vinegar, 1 tablesp Sicilian orange blossom honey, dried oregano, seasalt and black pepper:

ITALY MAGAZINE ROUND-UP - 18

Here is my pick of last week's Italy Magazine articles:

We'll start with the news stories tonight:  The issue of the burqa made headlines again as Italy clarified its proposed new law which would ban the face veil.  The children of  Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman who has been condemned to death for adultery and the alleged murder of her husband, turned to Italy first to ask for asylum when they felt themselves to be under threat. I understand that they are now under arrest in Iran. This was also the week in which Italian surgeons gave a teenager a permanent artificial heart and what may be the world's smallest apartment went on sale in Rome.  The organisers of the 2011 Sanremo Song Festival look set to abandon the tradition of the blonde female presenter or co-presenter and the Milanese argued over this statue.

Our blog of the week was The Artichoke Blog and, as I always make a terrible mess when preparing these vegetables, I was relieved when Michael told me that this is OK!  Staying with food, for my travel article I wrote about some of the best chestnut festivals in Italy at this time of year.  And last but definitely not least, I very much enjoyed interviewing Katia Amore of the loveSicily Cookery School and blog for my Patti Chiari column.  Do take a look to find out why Modicans began cooking with chocolate and what Katia thinks about the future of Sicilian cooking.

Happy reading.

PASTA AL FORNO WITH ARTICHOKES AND MUSHROOMS

I came across a magazine recipe for pasta al forno with asparagus but it is late for asparagus in Sicily. So I decided to adapt the recipe to what was available, namely beautiful artichokes and boletus mushrooms:

Cook 400 gr rigatoni according to the instructions on the pack.   Meanwhile, prepare 6 artichokes for cooking. To do this, follow the instructions of a good cook like Marcella Hazan and be ruthless! Put the dechoked vegetables into water to which you have added a little lemon juice as you finish them. Chop the mushrooms roughly.  Drain the pasta and put it back in the pot.  In a wide pan, heat 2 tablesp olive oil and add a crushed garlic glove and some chopped parsley to it.  Dry the artichokes with kitchen paper, cut each into 4 and chuck them, with the mushrooms, into the pan. Cook, stirring, for about 10 minutes and season them. They should absorb the oil. When they are tender, lift them out of the pan and add them to the pasta. Now gently heat 800 ml bechamel - you can buy this ready-prepared in Italy.  Stir it all the time and do not let it boil. Add a little nutmeg and the grated zest of a lemon to it. Add the bechamel to the pasta and vegetables and mix very well. Now lightly oil a large baking dish and spoon about half the pasta mixture into it. Add a generous layer of freshly grated Grana Padano cheese, then add the rest of the pasta mixture. Finish with another layer of "Grana". Put it all in the oven at 200 C for 30 mins.

Above:  assembling the dish, the finished dish,  and the dish after a portion has been cut and served.

These quantities will serve 6 generously.

It occurs to me that you could make a similar dish using mushrooms and peas. In this case, boil the peas till just tender and fry only the mushrooms before assembling the dish.

Buon appetito!

ANOTHER SUPERMARKET "GIFT"

I've been collecting tiny stamps [in addition to points] for a couple of months now in the supermarket and was finally able to claim this pretty porcelain salad bowl:

So I just had to make my favourite chicken, artichoke and pepper salad: