Cheese and Pears

Archive for the ‘from cookbooks’ Category

Sicilian Recipes: Spaghetti with almonds and basil

Posted on Jul 22, 2009 11:13:10 PM

This spaghetti recipe is a sure shot, something to cook for your guests, who will be amazed by this sauce, and will ask you: “how did you do that? It’s delicious.” And you will say, in a casual I-get-that-a-lot manner “oh no, it’s really easy, it just takes ten minutes.” Except that it does.

You can say whatever you want about Jamie Oliver, but his recipes work. This one is taken from Jamie’s Italy, and it’s a Sicilian sauce. The beauty of it is that it’s not a cooked sauce, it’s all with raw ingredients, a sort of pesto.

For 6 people:

• 450g (1lb) spaghetti
• ½ clove of garlic (it’s one clove in the original recipe, but Jamie is a bit too generous with garlic for my taste)
• 4 handfuls of fresh basil
• 150 g (5½ oz ) of almonds
• 150 g (5½ oz ) of grated parmesan cheese
• extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper
• 600g (1 1/3 lb) of tomatoes

Toast the almonds in a pan (no oil), smash the garlic with a  pestle and mortar. Add the almonds, garlic and basil to a food processor and whiz them until you have a coarse powder consistency. Pour the mix in a bowl and add the tomatoes cut in half. Gently squeeze the tomatoes with your hands, mixing well. Add the Parmesan cheese and add a bit of olive oil to loosen up. Add salt and pepper if you feel like it, but it’s not always necessary.

That’s it, when the spaghetti are ready and drained, pour them in a bowl and serve. This spaghett recipe will make you popular.

Mashed Potatoes Recipe | Baked mashed potato cake

Posted on Jun 14, 2009 09:18:09 AM

How do you get rid of 1.5 kg of spuds that have started to sprout in your kitchen? Bake a mashed potato cake. This mashed potatoes recipe is taken from Gennaro’s Italian Year (for amazon.co.uk click here). The word gatò is of course the italianized version of the French gâteau. The original recipe uses a kind of Italian cheese called Provolone, but I used the ubiquitous mozzarella instead.

• 1.5kg (3 1/3 pounds) potatoes
• 100g (4 ½ oz) + 25g (1 oz)  butter
• 1 glass of milk
• 2 + 2 eggs
• 150g (5 oz) grated Parmesan
• 200g (7 0z) mozzarella
• 100g (3 ½ oz) provolone (or 100g of more mozzarella)
• 200g (7 oz salami (or 200g bacon bits)
• 2 tbsp finely chopped parsley
• large handful of dried breadcrumbs

Boil the potatoes in their skin until they’re soft, let them cool a little (making sure they’re still warm), peel them and mash them in bowl.

Preheat the oven at 200°C (400°F), grease a loose-bottomed cake tin with some of the extra butter and dust with breadcrumbs.

Stir the milk in the mashed potatoes and add 2 whole eggs plus 2 yolks, Parmesan. Provolone and/or mozzarella, salami or bacon, and parsley.

If you used mozzarella instead of Provolone (as it happened with the lasagnas), the taste will be less strong, and less salty, so add a pinch of salt to correct this. The bacon or the salami will take care of the rest.

Pour the mix in the cake tin and press with a spatula, sprinkle the surface with breadcrumbs and little knobs of butter.

Bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes until golden.

If you can’t eat it all in one go, let it cool completely, slice it and freeze it, mashed potato recipe makes an excellent lunchbox.

Homemade Biscuits recipes: Polenta biscuits

Posted on Jun 6, 2009 09:55:25 AM

This biscuit recipe is a special one. Polenta flour is nothing but cornmeal, cook it and you’ll have polenta, which is a classic peasant dish from Northern Italy (more of that in future posts).

I baked these polenta biscuits for my colleagues last week (it was my birthday), along with some classic chocolate chip cookies. An interesting social experiment about people and food came out. As I ran out of butter for the cookies, I had to halve the quantity. When I started to walk around the floor with a big container with many polenta biscuits and very few cookies, everybody went for the ones they were more familiar with, that is the cookies, even if they had to twist their fingers to pick them up without touching the others. As a result, cookies finished very soon, and this opened the road to the polenta biscuits. Needless to say they were very well received.

This is not a classic Italian recipe, in fact it’s taken from one of the first Jamie Oliver’s books, The Return of the Naked Chef, (click here for .co.uk)  but hey, polenta flour is like a flag, it makes something Italian. Needless to say, they’re perfect for breakfast, along with these other breakfast biscuits and cakes

• 170g (6 oz) butter
• 170g (6 oz) sugar
• 255g (9 oz) polenta flour
• 100g (3 ¾ oz) plain flour
• zest of 2-3 oranges, finely chopped
• 2 large eggs

Put the sugar and the sifted flours together, then rub in the butter. The method should be the same as for the shortcrust pastry in the fruit tart: use cold butter and make sure you rub it in the flour as quick as possible. But in this case you won’t have to roll the mixture out, so feel free to soften the butter in the microwave and stick the mixture in the fridge before baking it.

Once the butter is mixed, add the orange zest and the eggs. Put it in the fridge until it’s firm (from 30 minutes to one hour), then spoon small teaspoons of the mixture on the oven rack covered with parchment paper, and bake in the preheated oven at 190°C (375° F) for 5-7 minutes until the edges are brownish.

Let the biscuits  cool completely before serving.

More cakes, and  more Jamie Oliver’s recipes.

Fruit tart (torta alla frutta)

Posted on Jun 2, 2009 06:27:00 AM

I made this fruit tart for a cake competition at The Company last week. The cakes were on display, anybody could come around and eat as much as they liked and give a vote. About 15 cakes, tarts and muffins and took part, almost all of them very good looking and good tasting. In spite of what one would think, people cook even if they don’t have a foodblog, and can be quite competitive.

I admit I had fantasies of calling this post “My award winning fruit tart”, but I didn’t win, a black forest tart did, and a chocolate and strawberry cake came second. However, an insider told me my tart and a bunch of others received many votes. If only it had been bigger (sigh): bigger tart = more tart slices = more potential tart voters. The thing is, shortcrust pastry needs a specific tin, and the one I have is small. So, if you ever take part to a cake contest, remember: make it big. Oh, and fill it with chocolate and cream…

Fruit tart is very common in cake shops in Italy, less common in homebaking, maybe because it takes a long time to make. It’s composed of four layers: shortcrust pastry + pastry cream + fruit + a glaze of apricot jam (or jelly).

For the shortcrust pastry, I used Jamie Oliver’s pastry recipe for the fig tart in Jamie’s Italy (click here if you’re reading from Europe):

• 125g (4½  oz) butter
• 100g (3½  oz) icing sugar
• a small pinch of salt
• 255g (9 0z) plain flour
• zest of 1/2 lemon
• 2 egg yolks
• 1-2 tablespoons of cold milk or water

For the pastry cream:

• 25gr (1 oz) flour
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 stick of vanilla (or zest of 1/2 lemon)
• 50g (2 oz) caster sugar
• 250ml (1/2 pint) milk

For the fruit tart topping, any combination of fresh fruit you like, for example: bananas, strawberries, raspberries, apples, kiwis, grapes, plums, pears…

For the glaze (optional), 1 tablespoon apricot jam.

To make the shortcrust pastry.
Sift the flour and the icing sugar in a bowl and add the salt and the lemon zest.

Dice the butter when it’s still cold and, one piece at the time, rub it
with your thumbs against your fingers and the flour, until you end up with
a crumbly mixture.

Add the egg yolks, then work the ingredients just enough to put them together, don’t knead the dough or the pastry will become elastic and chewy. Add a tablespoon or two of cold milk if it’s too dry.

Form a ball with the dough, dust it with flour, cover it with cling film
and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

To make the pastry cream.
Heat the milk in a small saucepan with the vanilla stick without boiling
it. Take it off the stove.

In a bowl, whisk the sugar and the yolks until you get a soft and smooth
cream. Add the sifted flour a little at the time, keep on stirring to avoid
flour lumps. Add the mix to the milk and put it back on the stove. Very carefully, and with a very low heat, bring the cream to the boil, don’t stop stirring. Let it boil for 2-5 minutes then take off the stove.

Grease a circular 28 cm loose bottomed tart tin and dust it with flour. Preheat the oven at 180° C (356° F).

Take the dough out of the fridge and dust the work surface with a lot of flour.
Flatten the dough with your hands and roll it out with a rolling pin until
it’s about 1/2 cm thick. Place it on the tin and gently press it against
the sides. Using a knife or your hands, get rid of the pastry in excess.

Cut a piece of parchment paper or aluminum foil to fit the bottom of the
tin. Place it on the dough and fill the tin with pie weights, rice or
beans, making sure the weights are over the entire surface.
Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the crust is dry and lightly
golden brown then take off the oven and remove the weights.

Let baked pastry shell cool, then spread an even layer of pastry
cream.

Slice the fruit of your choice and put it on top. Arrange it as you like in one layer.

To make the glaze.
This is to prevent the fruit from drying and to give the tart a more shiny
look. Heat the apricot jam in a small saucepan with a tablespoon of water, over medium heat until melted. Remove from the heat and strain the jam through a fine colander. Let it cool and gently brush a thin even layer on the fruit topping.

This is it, leave it in the fridge a couple of hours before serving.

A few necessary notes:

• some shortcrust recipes use whole eggs instead of just the yolk, but this makes the pastry more crumbly, which is more suitable for biscuits
• be light with your fingers when working the butter: the less it melts the better
• by its nature, shortcrust pastry breaks very easily, and placing the rolled out dough on the tin can be tricky. If you are familiar using the rolling pin, lay a piece of parchment paper on the dough, roll it around the rolling pin, and unroll it on the tart tin
• alternatively, roll the pastry directly on parchment paper, then place it on the tin and let it slide
• if you have time, after placing the pastry on the tin, put it back in the fridge for 30 minutes more

More cakes, and more Jamie Oliver’s recipes.

Chicken Recipes: Lemon Chicken with Saffron

Posted on May 18, 2009 05:40:59 PM

There’s a new cookbook on the shelf: Gennaro’s Italian Year , by Gennaro Contaldo (click here if you’re reading from Europe), Jamie Oliver’s mentor. The list of recipes I’d like to try is done already, and as I hadn’t used saffron for a long time, I started with this chicken recipe. For two people:

• 2 chicken breasts or thighs
• 2 carrots
• 1 stick of celery
• 85g (3 oz) peas
• ½ onion
• salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil
• a few strands of saffron
• juice of 1 lemon
• ½ glass of white whine

In a bowl mix together the lemon juice, the wine, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Put the chicken in a snug container, rub the salt and pepper and pour the marinade all over. Leave the chicken in the fridge for as long as you can up to 12 hours to marinade.

Take the chicken out of the fridge and let it reach room temperature. In a frying pan, or a oven proof dish heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and the chopped onion and let it sweat on a low heat until lucid and soft (7-10 minutes).

In the meantime preheat the oven at 180° C (350°F).

When the sauté is ready, add the chopped carrots, the peas and the celery, turn up the heat and add the wine, let it evaporate and turn down the heat again. When the vegetables are a a bit tender, set aside.

Re-heat the remaining oil and add the chicken pieces, and fry them on both sides until light brown. Now put everything together (starting from the bottom): vegetables, chicken and marinade and put it in the oven for about 45-60  minutes.

Ten minutes before it’s ready, dissolve the saffron in some hot water and pour it on the chicken.

Fastes chicken recipe ever.

Soup Recipes: Pearl Barley Soup (zuppa d’orzo)

Posted on Apr 20, 2009 06:35:31 PM

Now that spring is here, and windows can be left open and kitchen aromas can fly out, let’s continue the trend of winter soup recipes (after the lentils soup). This one is taken from Tobie Puttock’s Daily Italian (reading from Europe? click here)

This soup recipe is for 4-6 people:

• 100g (3½ oz) pearl barley
• 1.5 litres (2½ pints) chicken or vegetable stock
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large carrot
• 1 large zucchini
• 1 large potato
• 1 leek (the white part)
• 3 sticks of celery
• 1 large onion (or half if you’re not a onion lover)
• 2-3 finely sliced cloves of garlic
• 50g (2 oz) of diced bacon
• salt, pepper

Place the barley in a bowl and cover with tap water. Let it soak for one hour.

In the meantime, chop, slice, dice everything like a mad.

Heat the stock for the soup, and in another saucepan, heat the oil and sauté gently the carrot, zucchini, potato, leek, celery, onion, garlic, pancetta.

When the vegetables are a bit tender, add the stock and the drained barley.

Cover and let the soup simmer for one hour. If you like, take off the lid the last 15 minutes to make the soup a bit thicker.

More soup recipes and vegetable recipes

Pork chops with sage (costolette di maiale con salvia)

Posted on Mar 4, 2009 08:52:12 PM

Time for pork chops. Pork meat from time to time is a treat (well, for me at least). This one is taken from Jamie’s Italy (Jamie’s Italy for readers from Europe). He claims he saw them in a trattoria in Florence.

This is one of the pork chops recipes, where at the end you’ll have both panfried and baked pork chops, and if your guests are not scared off by pork meat, you can surprise them with a hidden pocket with stuffing in it. And if you want to go lighter there’s always the Hunter’s chicken from the good ole Jamie.

The original pork chop recipe is for 4 people, but all the ingredients are in an even number, so you can easily divide them by two, like I did:

• 250-400g (½ – 0.75 pounds) potatoes (it’s 500g in the original recipe, but 250g per person is a lot of spuds!)
• salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil
• 2 pork chops with the bone
• 8 fresh sage leaves
• flour to dust
• 3 rashers of smoked bacon

For the stuffing of the pork chops:

• 4 sage leaves
• 1 clove of garlic
• 2 large slices of ham
• 25g (1 oz) butter
• 2 dried apricots

Ok, the first part is tricky, but not impossible. You need to create a pocket for the stuffing inside the pork chops. To do it, insert a knife horizontally, being careful not to cut the meat from side to side, but just in the middle.

Dice the potatoes and put them in a pan with salted water. Leave them 5 minutes in boiling water, than drain and let them cool.

Now preheat the oven at 220° (430F).

Grind the ingredients for the stuffing in the food processor and press them into the pockets in the pork chops, push, push and push until there’s no room left.

Take 4 sage leaves, dress them with olive oil and press them on the flour on one side only of the pork chops. Stick them on each side of the chops, flour side down.

Cut the bacon in strips and put them in a roasting tray, with the remaining sage leaves, the garlic, and the potatoes and a bit of olive oil. Put the tray in the oven.

After 10 minutes, heat a frying pan, then add a little olive oil and fry the chops for 10 minutes until brown.

Put the pork chops on top of the potatoes and continue cooking in the oven for 10-15 minutes more.

The sage on the pork chops is not only for decoration, you’re supposed to eat them too.
More pork chop recipes

Easy Chicken Recipes: Hunter’s chicken (pollo alla cacciatora)

Posted on Feb 19, 2009 06:22:09 AM

Here is one of my favorite chicken recipes and a classic of Italian food: Hunter’s chicken (pollo alla cacciatora)

btw, bright luvely picture isn’t it? Could it be more out of focus?

I don’t want to sound harsh, but chicken and turkey meats are fairly tasteless. The good thing about it though, is that you need to find good recipes to make them sexy. This Jamie Oliver’s version from Jamie’s Italy (reading from Europe? click here) is one of them: hunter’s chicken, a popular Tuscan chicken recipe, where King and Queen are wine and olives,

To get the best out of this chicken recipe, start marinating it the day before. If the sauce is not too liquid it’s great with pasta too.

I followed Jamie’s recipe almost literally (see notes below). These are the ingredients for three people:

• 1kg (2 ½ lb) of chicken pieces
• salt and pepper
• 4 bay leaves
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 2 cloves of garlic
• red wine to cover the chicken (Chianti in the original recipe)
• flour for dusting
• extra virgin olive oil
• 3 anchovy fillets
• about 10 black olives
• one 400g (1 pound) tin of plum tomatoes

The day before, season the chicken and put it in a bowl with the bay leaves, the rosemary and one crushed clove of garlic. Cover the chicken with the wine and seal the bowl with cling film. Leave it overnight to marinate.

Drain the chicken, setting aside the marinade. Pat it with kitchen paper, and leave it half an hour until it reaches room temperature.

Dust the chicken with flour. Heat a frying pan, add the olive oil and fry the pieces gently until lightly brown. Remove the chicken from the pan and add the sliced clove of garlic and the anchovies. Let it go for another 2-3 minutes, then add the rest: olives, tomatoes, chicken and marinade. Let it simmer for 15 minutes. In the meantime preheat the oven to 180°.

Transfer the chicken to the casserole and leave it there for about 1½ hours, or until the meat is very tender.

Jamie says:

• you need ½ bottle of red wine to cover 2kg of chicken, but it’s not enough, and you know what they say: bottles of wine don’t grow on trees. I’m sure that the hunter’s wife won’t be offended if you mix 2/3 of wine and 1/3 of water
• use an ovenproof pan, which I don’t have yet
• bring the chicken to the boil and put it in the oven straightaway covered with a lid or tinfoil. But there’s a lot of liquid marinade and I prefer to let it coagulate, so I left it simmer for 15 minutes and put it in the oven without covering it. For the same reason, next time I’ll try with a free-range chicken, as it’s supposed to release less water

As I said, one of my favorite chicken recipes. Feel free to look at the rest of my meat recipes

Thin Pizza Crust (pasta per pizza sottile)

Posted on Feb 14, 2009 09:45:16 AM

This pizza crust definitely is my best so far. For this thin crust pizza dough I used Linda Collister’s recipe for pitta bread in Bread: From Sourdough to Rye: From Ciabatta to Rye (reading from Europe? click here).

For a pizza crust recipe for 3-4 people you’ll need:

• 500g (4 ½ cups) strong white flour preferably sifted
• about 300 ml (10 fl 0z) of lukewarm water, preferably filtered
• 15g ( 1 tbsp) of fresh yeast or a 7g (½ tbsp) sachet of dry instant yeast
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt

For the topping, typically the minimum requirements are:

• one tin of chopped tomatoes
• one ball of fresh mozzarella cheese and/or any kind of cheese that melts (like the Camembert in the picture)

In a bowl pour 2/3  of the water and the yeast. Stir until it starts bubbling, then add the olive oil and keep stirring.

Add a handful of flour, and start mixing it with your hand, when it’s smooth add another one, and so on. After the second or third handful you can add the salt.

Work the dough with your hand in the bowl until you have collected all the flour, start using both hands when it gets too hard to work it with just one.

Transfer the dough to the working surface and knead it for 5-10 minutes. The final result should be an elastic, slightly moist dough, that sticks for a second to the working surface, but comes off easily. If you think it’s too dry add some water, just few drops at the time.

Dust the bottom of the bowl with flour and put the dough in it. Cover it with cling film and let it rise until it has doubled in size (it should take about two hours).

When it’s ready, start preheating the oven at 220° leaving the baking tray in.

Push the dough gently with your knuckles to let the air come out, dust the working surface with flour.

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin until it’s very thin (about ½ cm).

Tear off a piece of oven paper that fits the baking tray and lay the dough gently on it.

Cover the  pizza dough with the tomato sauce, add a sprinkle of salt.

When the oven is ready, take out the baking tray (remember: it’s hot!) and transfer the thin crust pizza dough, using the four corners of the oven paper (you will probably need an extra pair of hands here), then put it in the oven.

After 15 minutes you can add the mozzarella cheese and the ham, then let it bake for about 20 more minutes, until the mozzarella is melted, and slightly brown. If you are used to a thicker homemade pizza crust, remember that a thin crust pizza needs less cooking.

One note on water. The bread and pizzas recipes usually give a fixed quantity of water and then say that you should add more if the dough is too dry, or add flour if it’s too wet. I don’t think that the latter makes much sense.  Adding flour changes the balance with the other dry ingredients (yeast and salt in this case), so I think it’s wiser to use just part of the water and then add the necessary to make the dough moist enough.

If you likes this classic of Italian food, try the rest of pizza recipes.