Emiko Davies's Blog, page 11

Peach and amaretti tart

Most of the time I buy fresh produce based on what looks good — and then I decide what to prepare with it at home. I really do feel like it’s the best way to shop and eat because more often than not the things you come home with are the freshest, the most in season, the most delicious ingredients to start out with. Right now the tomatoes look good, the firm, small, ribbed zucchini with bright yellow blooms still attached do too, and the blushing stone fruit is hard to walk past — we have been waiting weeks for the good ones, the ones that easily perfume a room, to appear. Nothing screams summer more than these.

I came home from a market trip recently with a basket of peaches, still undecided about what to do with them — eat them on their own, turn them into gelato (I was contemplating adding some apricot pits for their uniquely almond-like flavour) or bake them, Piemonte style, stuffed with amaretti biscuits (what is it about peaches and bitter almond that makes them such a good pair?). This last one is one of my absolute favourite summer recipes, its only downfall is having to turn the oven on in the heat but I would do it for these! But I was also in the mood for some kind of crostata, a tart or pie, and it became quite clear to me that what I needed to do was put the stuffed peaches recipe into a pastry crust and call it a day.

I made my favourite short crust pastry dough — it is based on one of Pellegrino Artusi’s century old pastry crust recipes — but instead of regular flour with a rather rustic stone-ground organic farro flour that I thought would lend a nice, almost nutty flavour to the tart. I left out any sugar but feel free to add about 50 grams of sugar to it if you prefer a touch more sweetness. I topped it with the peach “stuffing”, a mixture of crushed amaretti biscuits, egg and a couple spoons of sugar, followed by peach slices. It cooks in less time than the stuffed peaches too, so anyone who is impatient or just doesn’t want the oven on for too long will be happy.

Peach and amaretti tart

Note: If using regular flour for this you will only need one whole egg and one yolk. Stone-ground, organic flours are not all equal so take the quanto basta approach — use as much or as little flour as you need. If you can’t get amaretti biscuits, you can use savoiardi (lady fingers) but you’ll miss the bitter almond flavour, so in that case you may like to add a splash of amaretto liqueur or even almond essence.

Pastry:

125 grams cold butter

225 grams farro (spelt) flour (see note)

2 eggs

zest of 1 lemon

Filling:

about 25-30 amaretti biscuits, crushed

1 egg

2 tablespoons white or raw sugar

3-4 peaches, sliced

Ice cream, to serve

To make the pastry, chop the butter into cubes and place in a bowl with the flour. Rub together until you have a mixture that looks like coarse breadcrumbs. Add the eggs (leave out one egg white if using all purpose flour), beaten, and the zest and combine until you have a smooth dough. If too dry, add a spoonful of ice water until it comes together, if too wet, add a little more flour. Chill the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes then roll out to 2-3mm thickness and line a tart tin. Prick the base with the tines of a fork all over and place in fridge until needed.

Combine the crushed amaretti with the egg and sugar and pour this mixture over the pastry base. Cover with peach slices then bake in a ready oven at 180C for about 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden and crisp and the peaches are wrinkled, soft and a bit oozy. Let cool to room temperature (truth be told, I even like this cold-from-the-fridge on hot days) and serve in slices with a blob of ice cream.

Fagioli del Purgatorio: a summery bean salad

Summer in Italy means one main thing for me — trying to keep cool, which includes staying away from the stove. Luckily, it’s also the time of year when fresh produce is so ripe and sweet, you barely need to do anything to it anyway — I practically live off tomatoes in the summer, dousing them in olive oil and eating with thickly torn pieces of buffalo mozzarella, usually. Or chopping or squeezing juicy ones raw into a sauce to dress pasta. Prosciutto e melone becomes a staple meal, too, as does some form of this simple bean salad. Minimal and effortless, which is, I think, the best way when it is too hot to move.

Last summer, while visiting my lovely friend Alice at her country home in Lubriano, a gorgeous, off the beaten path village in a corner of Lazio’s Viterbo province that borders Tuscany and Umbria, she gave me a jar of beans. They were tiny, pearl-like beans grown locally to Lubriano called fagioli del purgatorio – purgatory beans. According to the Slow Food Foundation, fagioli del purgatorio have been grown since time immemorial in the province of Viterbo. Even the Etruscans of this area were already cultivating these beans. They’re typically boiled and dressed simply with olive oil, salt and pepper or cooked in soup. They are rather similar to cannellini, but smaller, sweeter, almost buttery and with a very delicate fine skin that means they don’t need soaking before cooking — or less cooking time (perfect for avoiding having the stove on for too long).

If using dried beans, you may want to see my favourite way to cook beans, which is based on Elizabeth David’s recipe for a very traditional Tuscan way to gently cook beans with garlic and herbs. You’ll never taste beans as good as when done like this. But, if you’re also looking for a quick meal, fresh podded beans cooked the same way are quicker and of course tinned, cooked beans make a meal in a flash.

Insalata di fagioli, pomodoro e cipolla

Bean, tomato and red onion salad

This is one of my favourite summer meal solutions. You can do the same (but without soaking and less cooking time) with freshly podded beans too. My friend Valeria uses fresh borlotti beans; in Tuscany you’d normally use cannellini beans. Use whatever you like, tinned or fresh or dried, cooked beans of any sort — chickpeas and lentils are also nice. You can also add tinned tuna for an extra protein boost (a version I have in my cookbook Florentine).

Serves 4

1 medium red onion
1 large ox heart tomato (or a couple of smaller tomatoes, or a handful of cherry tomatoes)
350 grams of drained, cooked borlotti, cannellini or other beans
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoon red wine vinegar or lemon juice
handful of fresh parsley leaves, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Halve and thinly slice the red onion and place in a bowl of chilled water with a tablespoon of vinegar for 10 minutes. In the meantime, roughly chop the tomato and place in a serving bowl with the drained beans and dress with the oil, the rest of the vinegar, the parsley and salt and pepper. Drain and toss through the red onion and serve. This is also great the next day too, right from the fridge.

 

Honey from a Weed, the world of Patience Gray

Honey from a Weed is one of those few cookbooks I could keep by my bedside. I like to open it at random and become absorbed by a recipe or a story, like the one about sharing a dinner with shepherds on Naxos, the differing views of a Milanese and a Salentine diver on what to do with the an octopus, or the “majestic” Catalonian feast that ended with a century old wine that tasted of chocolate syrup. 

Published in 1986, it is more than just a cookbook – it is a memoir that follows Patience Gray’s travels to the places she called home in Spain, France, Italy and Greece, it is a foraging handbook (she became an expert on mushrooms and wild weeds) and a guide to a way of life that has vanished. Forever faithful to the place and time and the memories from where she plucked the recipe, Gray’s experiences “living in the wild”, as she says, make this a collection of recipes unlike any other.

Gray, born in Surrey, England in 1917, was no stranger to writing. She wrote her first books in the 1950s; her first cookbook was called Plats du Jour, co-written with Primrose Boyd in 1957. It was a hit, selling 50,000 in its first year and she shortly afterwards became the editor of The Observers’s women’s page. In 1960, when she was 43, she met the love of her life, Belgian artist Norman Mommens, who she refers to simply as “The Sculptor” throughout Honey from a Weed. They embarked on an odyssey following marble for the Sculptor’s work – as Gray says in her introduction, “A vein of marble runs through this book. Marble determined where, how and among whom we lived; always in primitive conditions.”

The marble took them to Provence, Carrara (Tuscany), Veneto, Catalonia, Apollona on the Greek island of Naxos and Puglia, in the deep-south of Italy’s heel. It was in Puglia where the couple finally settled in 1970 at the farmhouse she calls Spigolizzi – and it was here Gray died in 2005, five years after Mommens.

Many of Gray’s recipes are so mesmerising that they make you feel transported to a particular time and place – under Glikó, a Greek specialty of fruit such as grapes, quince or unripe walnuts in syrup, she describes it as a restorative treat, offered to weary travellers: “The glikó is presented on a saucer with a spoon and is consumed under a fig tree in a courtyard. The lady of the house provides you with a rush-seated chair to sit on, and another on which to rest your legs. She sprinkles the courtyard floor with water from a water jar to lay the dust and cool the air, and presents you with a sprig of basil and a glass of spring water while you despatch the glikó.”

Fasting and feasting (part of the book’s subtitle and, incidentally, the name of a recent biography of Patience Gray by Adam Federman) are recurring themes in Honey from a Weed. Gray inserts these concepts in connection with the dependence on the seasons (moments of abundant harvest lead to feasting, while sparse, harsh winters are times of fasting) as well as the traditional culture, such as the Greek orthodox fasting days that were strictly followed on Naxos. She puts this all into perspective over and over again by comparing the modern world of everyday convenience to the primitive one she was living, and observes things like,

“Poverty rather than wealth gives the good things of life their true significance. Home-made bread rubbed with garlic and sprinkled with olive oil, shared – with a flask of wine – between working people, can be more convivial than any feast.”

Having experienced this exact delight many times during the decade or so that I have lived in Tuscany, I can say, I wholeheartedly agree.

Gray begins the cookbook with true basics – fire, pots and pans, the kitchen, olive oil (which, along with the marble, follows her throughout the book) before moving onto other subject, like edible weeds, poultry and “Fungi and Michelangelo”. I particularly love reading about her kitchens and her batterie de cuisine – after all, these things have quite a lot to do with how and what she cooked (the recipe “How to cook birds without an oven” no doubt came about because of the winters Gray spent in the Veneto in a cottage with no oven). 

I am fascinated about how a cookbook writer lived in kitchens that often had no running water and no electricity. In the Greek fishing village of Apollona, where there was not a trickle of tap water, one of the main heat sources for cooking was a neolithic stone shed where a large black pot could sit over a fire: “This was ideal for summer, and the sea was at the door, I was able to light a fire, start the pot with its contents cooking, plunge into the sea at mid-day and by the time I had swum across the bay and back, the lunch was ready and the fire a heap of ashes.” Their one luxury was a two-burner gas stove that they brought themselves to the island, where frying was done and green coffee beans could be pan-roasted before being made into coffee.

Gray’s kitchen at La Barozza, in a vineyard high above the Tuscan marble quarries of Carrara, had a wood-fired oven and a traditional Tuscan cooking hearth, where a large pot was suspended from a chimney hook “in which everything from polenta to wood pigeons could be cooked.” Water was collected from an outdoor rain cistern by the bucket-full. 

La Spigolizzi, her home that she refers to as a cowshed, in Puglia’s Salento, only received electricity in the 1990s. There, much cooking was also done on an ancient hearth – a spot Gray believes was once used for smoking cheese – fired with olive wood. It used for grilling and slow cooking in earthenware pots, while she also had gas stove with a defective oven (her neighbour had a wood-fired oven where they would bake their bread).

As a result of this particular way of life, living off the land in ancient dwellings, and her observations and artist’s point of view, to say Gray’s cookbook is full of interesting things is an understatement. It is full of things you don’t find in other books. In between recipes such as “What to do with a pig’s head”, a “Vineyard salad” of beautiful and delicious weeds collected by a seven year old girl called Eugenia, and a recipe for fox (the recommendations of which are given by “an old anarchist in Carrara”), Gray manages to weave in descriptions of Mantova in the winter, Homer’s Odyssey, Andrea Mantegna’s Renaissance paintings and gives symbolic references to most ingredients – for the humble pig, she notes that the swine of Irish kings were tended to by poets. And she is full of sage advice that you’ll be hard-pressed to find from anyone these days: “Never travel any distance with new oil in glass demijohns; it may still be fermenting and will crack the jar.” 

This is not to say that it is full of things that we can’t cook here, today, even though Laura Shapiro in the New York Times recently pointed out that it is not a cookbook that we associate with home cooking. Calling the recipes “otherworldly”, she writes: “How dare we bring home a cauliflower from the supermarket, turn on the air-conditioner and the nightly news, and start preparing cavolfiore colla salsa virgiliana (cauliflower with Virgil’s sauce)?” (It is a delicious recipe for barely-boiled cauliflower dressed in garlic, salt, olive oil, breadcrumbs, wine vinegar and parsley, all pounded in a mortar).

But my copy of Honey from a Weed is full of sticky notes bookmarking the recipes that I cannot wait to try, like the sole in white wine with muscat grapes inspired from her time in the vineyard above Carrara. It couldn’t be simpler. Sole fillets (“Leave on the lateral fins,’ she advises, “Their gelatinous nature contributes to the sauce”) are sprinkled in salt and pepper and cooked in a knob of butter, a splash or more of dry white wine and a handful of peeled grapes. I would maybe serve it with the endive and escarole salad, dressed with chopped anchovy fillets, capers, puntarelle (chicory shoots), finely sliced fennel, mint, olive oil and wine vinegar. It would go rather nicely, too, with the “Potato torta (neither cake, nor flan, nor tart)”, made with a creamy potato mash, to which eggs, nutmeg, parmesan and lightly crisped lardo (you could use pancetta) are added. Breadcrumbs made from crushed taralli are sprinkled over the top with olive oil before being baked.

In the summer during a tomato glut, I always make some version of her uncooked tomato sauce to go on spaghetti and when I have a very good sheep’s milk ricotta, I follow her advice on spaghetti with ricotta to a tee – “Eat half the ricotta fresh for lunch with plenty of black pepper and a dish of weeds or spinach,” then the rest is saved for dinner, when it is stirred with a splash of the hot pasta cooking water, chopped parsley, black pepper and nutmeg to make a sauce to dress piping hot spaghetti. In fact, all of her pasta recipes are so appealing and simple that I think they would easily become favourites in many households – spaghetti with garlic and butter, fettuccine with cream, peas and pancetta, or orecchiette with arugula (rocket), for example. 

“It sometimes seems as if I have been rescuing a few strands from a former and more diligent way of life, now being fatally eroded by an entirely new set of values,” Gray writes. This is where I think her book offers something very special, something that has become even more relevant today, not only because I think many people like myself have a yearning to simplify things, to eat sustainably and to understand what it is like to live off the land (and maybe have a small patch to yourself) but also because the sort of recipes she offers are not just fluff and fancy, they have a reason, a purpose, a time and a place. They’re delicious, economical, nutritious, they restore the mind and the soul (just read her chapter on the restoring, antidepressant effects of pounding garlic and herbs in a mortar), feed friends and family, and provide wanderlust, much like reading a good novel can. Through each of her recipes, filled with accounts of her unique stories and experiences, we learn Gray’s secret, that “Good cooking is the result of a balance struck between frugality and liberality.”

Easter Adventures in Tuscany and tackling Carol Field’s Colomba

Surely the best thing about colomba, the Easter equivalent to panettone, is the sugared, toasted almond topping that covers the whole thing and crumbles when you cut it, so you sort of have no choice but just to pick up the crusty sugary bits and eat those on their own.

I’d always thought that colomba would make a very good baking project but was somewhat intimated by getting the right shape  — it’s vaguely in the shape of a dove, if you use your imagination — and texture — wonderfully soft, fluffy, sweet yeasted bread. I had attempted making panettone (this fig, walnut and date panettone) a few years ago with fair results — absolutely delicious results, actually, they were just not as fluffy and bouncy as expertly made ones from your favourite pastry shop where panettoni are hung upside-down to maintain their height and airiness.

But when I came across the familiar brown and gold paper forms for making colomba at the supermarket, I thought I’m only ever going to get a chance to make this now! Like the panettone, I referred to my favourite baking book for Italian specialties, Carol Field’s The Italian Baker.

Field recounts a bit of history behind the colomba, which I’m sure is little known to anyone these days. Colomba is a fixture at Easter tables all around Italy (and is often given as presents), even though it comes from the north of Italy, Pavia. It is one of those traditions that are now a given, where a slice of colomba, perhaps eaten with pieces of a cracked chocolate Easter egg and an espresso or a glass of dessert wine, is a welcome end to the meal (or indeed breakfast the next day). But the legend behind it is a medieval one and rather disturbing — maybe it was made up to encourage young girls to learn how to bake their own colomba (and make sure it was good) to get themselves out of sticky, undesirable situations.

The story goes that during the sixth century when Alboin, King of the Lombards, conquered Pavia after a three year siege, he demanded twelve girls to do with as he pleased. To quote Field’s story, “All except one girl wept and sobbed at her fate, but the one who used her head took some eggs, yeast, sugar, flour and candied fruits, and spices and made a sweet cake in the shape of a dove. When the king called her to his bed, the story goes, she brought him her colomba, which he ate with pleasure and then allowed her to go free.”

Field’s colomba recipe, in her typical style, is broken down into four different procedures (a sponge, a first dough, a second dough and that wonderful almond topping) to tackle that add somewhat to the intimidation but I tell you, it’s very doable (you’ll see the procedure is easy as pie and doesn’t require much effort or attention, even mixing by hand) and absolutely worthwhile. The only thing that I think will be a challenge for most modern home cooks is that the total rising time required is about 10 hours — that’s right. You can space it out in a day, if you happen to be at home pottering about, doing other things, the dough will just be sitting in a corner doing its thing — which is, I think, the best way to do this. If you want to split this up over two days, I would suggest doing the sponge and first dough one evening, then place the dough in the fridge to sit overnight and slowly rise — the only issue here is the butter, which hardens in the fridge, so the next morning let it come to room temperature again before proceeding with the second dough, shaping and rising. You can also prepare the almond mixture the day before if that helps.

One thing you will have after baking this is a whole lot of egg whites (you will need a couple of them later in the recipe but the rest can easily be frozen until you’re ready to use them for another baking project — I put them to use in some miniature pavlovas topped with cream and berries, see below!).

Carol Field’s Easter Colomba

Colomba Pasquale

Note: I’ve amended the recipe to add some metric measurements and am only including the instructions for mixing by hand (mixing with a mixer is a luxury for me, I don’t have one! I always bake and knead by hand, but if you have a mixer you can be sure there’s a bit less time you’ll be spending on this). If (like all my Tuscan in-laws) you don’t like candied orange pieces you can either simply leave it out or you could replace it with sultanas (raisins) or good quality dark chocolate chips. I personally love them but I always look for artisan candied fruit, which comes in large pieces like quarters of an orange rind, which need to then be chopped but are soft, sweet but not too sweet and delicious — far superior to the pre-chopped, commercial sort. Really an entirely different ingredient.

For the sponge:

3 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 tablespoon sugar

125 ml (1/2 cup) warm water

3 egg yolks

70 grams (1/2 cup) all purpose flour (I use tipo 00 flour)

Stir the yeast and sugar together with the water in a large bowl and let sit 10 minutes or until it begins to look foamy. Whisk in the egg yolks by hand, add the flour and combine until smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm corner of the kitchen until doubled, roughly 30 minutes.

First dough:

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

80 ml (1/3 cup) warm water

45 grams (3 tablespoons) softened, unsalted butter

210 grams (1 1/2 cups) all purpose flour

In a small bowl, stir the yeast into the water and let dissolve for a few minutes. Stir this into the bowl with the sponge made above, then add the softened butter and the flour to make a rather sticky dough. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm corner of the kitchen for 1-2 hours or until doubled in volume.

Second dough:

145 grams (1/2 cup + 3 tablespoons) sugar

1 tablespoon honey

3 egg yolks

1 1/2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract

2 oranges (preferably unwaxed and organic), zested

115 grams (1 stick) softened, unsalted butter

1 teaspoon salt

250 grams (2 cups) all purpose flour

150 grams (about 1 cup) chopped candied orange peel (see note above for substitutes)

Take the first dough, now risen, and add the sugar, honey (warmed slightly if very hard) and yolks, stirring thoroughly to combine. Add the vanilla, zest, butter, salt and flour — this last one adding a bit at a time. Stir until you have a soft dough, then knead on a clean, floured surface until elastic, about 7-10 minutes (I recommend doing this bit by hand even if you’ve mixed everything until now in a mixer).

Place the dough back in the large bowl (lightly oiled around the sides), cover and let rise until tripled, about 3 1/2 hours. You’re looking a dough full of large air bubbles when it is fully risen.

Shaping the dough:

Separate the dough into two portions and on a lightly floured surface, flatten each piece and scatter over the candied peel. Roll into a log , flatten again and roll with your hands to obtain a log about 25cm (10 inches), with slightly tapered ends. Do the same with the other piece but shape it into a fatter log about 18 cm (7 inches). If you have the special dove-shaped form, simply lay the long piece along the longer side of the form (which corresponds to the tail and body), then, after making a slight indentation in the centre of the long log, layer the shorter piece over the top of this indentation for the wings. If you don’t have a form, you can also build this “free form” doing the same thing, placing the shorter piece over the top of the long piece, almost like a cross, on a lined baking tray. Cover with a clean tea towel and let it rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours (3 if your kitchen is cold) — you can also warm things up a bit by keeping it in the oven with just the pilot light on or (Field’s suggestion) even putting the tray carefully over the top of a pan of steaming water.

In the meantime, prepare the sugar almond topping:

50 grams of blanched almonds

25 grams of bitter almonds or apricot kernels (these can be found in specialist Italian delis — otherwise use regular almonds and a touch of almond extract)

130 grams (1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons) sugar

1-2 egg whites (as needed)

40 grams of whole (unpeeled) raw almonds

1-2 tablespoons raw sugar (turbinado sugar)

Powdered sugar

In a food processor (or a mortar and pestle!), process the blanched almonds, bitter almonds (if using) and sugar until fine. Stir in enough egg white for the mixture to be spreadable but not too runny (if using almond extract, stir it in at this point). Very gently spread this mixture over the top of the risen Colomba, dotting with the whole raw almonds all over the surface. Sprinkle the raw sugar evenly over the top, then follow with a layer of sifted powdered sugar.

You’re finally ready to bake!

Bake at 200C (400F) for first 10 minutes, then reduce to 180C (250F) and continue baking a further 40 minutes. Cool completely on a rack before showing off at your Easter table.

Happy Easter! Buona Pasqua!

There is a phrase in Italian: Natale con i tuoi, pasqua con chi vuoi, which means you should spend Christmas with your family but Easter with whoever you like!

I’ll leave you with some scenes of my idea of a perfect Tuscan Easter, spent a couple of hours drive from Florence in Monte Argentario in the Maremma — incidentally, the place that inspired my cookbook, Acquacotta. It is a beautiful time to travel around Tuscany. Although it’s too cold to swim (that never stops my family from trying), the hot springs at Saturnia are lovely (and yes, we actually stopped the car to help guide a lamb back to its owner!), as is playing on the beach which is gloriously empty and spacious at this time of year — if you’re going there, have a look at the Argentario food guide I wrote for Gourmet Traveller last year as well as this one specifically about Porto Ercole.

P.S. The pastries below get a special mention because they are out of this world, particularly the one on the left, tette di monache, or, you’ll love this — nun’s tits — from Pasticceria Ferrini in Orbetello, which you’ll pass through to reach the promontory of Monte Argentario.

A crateful of clementines

What would you do – you’re driving past hundreds of citrus trees. With a better look, they’re mandarins, or, more precisely clementines. On the roadside is a truck selling crates of them for 1 euro a kilo. You stop, right? And buy a crate of 10 kilos. Even though you have to get on a plane the next day.

I couldn’t help myself. Marco, who I had already made turn 180 degrees to drive back to the truck, gave me that look of disapproval when I want to do something totally unreasonable like impulse buy citrus fruit that we can’t keep. “What are we going to do with these?” He questioned. I wasn’t sure. I wanted to taste them, I wanted to photograph them. And maybe I could even squeeze some of them into our tiny bag to take home. “It won’t be a waste, I’ll give the rest away!” I reasoned.

He just shook his head, giving in. I bought them, a big grin on my face.

We were just outside the port city of Taranto, on the western coast of Puglia in Italy’s deep south, where we spent a long weekend recently and where clementines have special IGP (Protected Geographical Indication) status.

These clementines — a hybrid of oranges and mandarins — grow in the fertile soil around the gulf of Taranto, particularly around the town of Palagiano (also known as “the city of clementines” — they celebrate the symbol of their city with a sagra, a food festival, every December) and the delicate fruit is harvested by hand. We don’t get these in Florence, it was my only chance to taste them – they are small with very few, if any, seeds, and they are very sweet.

I did manage to bring a bag full of clementines home from our trip to Taranto – I probably had about 30 but had barely made a dent in my 10 kilogram crate. My intention was simply to gobble them up but one afternoon, my daughter suggested we make jelly. So I turned to Rachel Roddy’s new cookbook, Two Kitchens (if you are living under a rock and still need to catch up on her first cookbook, more here), where I spotted her Sicilian recipe for Mandarin jelly under her ‘Orange’ section in the Fruit chapter. The fruit is carefully carved out of its skin and the jelly set inside – just the thing I knew my 5 year old would love, a bit like a magic trick (or, as she said later, a prank, that she could play on unsuspecting diners).

The recipe is so simple there is really nothing to it. I used a lot less sugar because these clementines were like candy already, but if you have something more tart you will want to adjust to taste. The result is a lovely, refreshing and unexpected dessert – I think as adults we might even forget what the melt in the mouth texture of jelly is like, it’s just delightful. I wanted to keep taking spoonfuls. Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking explains, in his classic way, the science behind this joy:

“Jellies are remarkable in two ways. At their best they are translucent, glistening, beautiful on their own or as settings for the foods embedded in them. And the temperature at which the gelatin junctions are shaken apart is right around body temperture: so gelatin melts effortlessly in the mouth to a full-bodied fluid. They bathe the mouth in sauce. No other thickener has this quality.”

A note on gelatin. Here in Italy I use “colla di pesce”, which is sold in the form of gelatin leaves as opposed to powder and is derived from isinglass (fish). I recommend always double-checking by referring to the individual packet of gelatin that you have for liquid proportions because there may be some slight variation — according to Harold McGee, the standard is a 3% solution, or 7 grams for every cup (250 ml) of liquid, for the right kind of wobble you want in a dessert.

Clementine jelly inspired by Rachel Roddy’s gelatina di mandarini recipe in Two Kitchens: Family Recipes from Sicily and Rome (2017, Headline Home)

750 ml freshly squeezed clementine juice (about 12)
4 gelatin leaves
70-200 grams of sugar (to taste; Rachel calls for the latter but using very sweet fruit I only needed 70 grams)

If you’d like to serve the jelly inside the fruit shells, cut the tops of the clementines and pull out the segments carefully, keeping fruit in tact. Keep the shells in the fridge until needed.

Soak the gelatin leaves in a small bowl of cold water until softened (my daughter’s favourite part). Mix half of the juice with the sugar in a pan and warm over low heat until the sugar is dissolved. Add the drained gelatin, letting them dissolve one sheet at a time. Take pan off the heat, add the rest of the juice and stir. Pour the mixture into the empty fruit shells and leave to cool until room temperature then leave to set in the fridge — about 6 hours.

If using a jelly mould, simply grease with a delicate oil , pour the mixture in and refrigerate until set. When set, dip the bottom quickly into a bowl of hot water to loosen (don’t leave it too long, it melts!) then invert onto a plate.

Radicchio, mascarpone and walnut cream

Of all the vegetables, radicchio just has to be the prettiest of all, don’t you agree?

I have always loved gnarly Florentine tomatoes and purple-tinged artichokes too, but they’re beautiful for their rustic, imperfect nature. Radicchio, on the other hand, looks like each leaf was painted by an artist. Have you seen the ones with watercolour-washed, pale pink leaves, the ones with almost-white leaves splattered in magenta, Jackson Pollock style, or the impossible, curly-fingered late radicchio from Treviso? Pure art.

I love radicchio simply as is, in its own salad, maybe with some blood orange pieces and a few taggiasche olives or thinly sliced, raw fennel, but this week I wanted to make a creamy, versatile sauce from it too. There’s a bar near my mother in law’s place that we often stop by for a well-made spritz and a simple aperitivo of various flavoured sauces and dips with toasted crostini. Our favourite is the crema di radicchio. I suspect, from its richness, that it is made with a lot of mayonnaise and is probably store bought too, but it gave me the idea to try a homemade one, a more refined one, with more radicchio for colour and flavour and mascarpone instead of mayonnaise for subtle, sweet creaminess to complement radicchio’s bitterness. 

The ingredients are simple — radicchio, mascarpone, walnuts, a squeeze of lemon juice. The colour becomes more intense if you let it sit overnight. I promise the surreal colour you see in these photos is real life.

You can use this cream like a dip for raw vegetables or grissini, spread it onto sandwiches — it’s lovely with ham, speck, or slices of brie and a few more walnuts crumbled over it, or even on its own, with more fresh radicchio leaves. You can even toss it through hot pasta with a splash of the pasta cooking water and let the warmth melt it into a beautiful sauce.

Radicchio, mascarpone and walnut cream

Crema di radicchio, mascarpone e noci

If you can’t get reliably good mascarpone where you are, try it homemade — it’s deliciously easy and all you need is cream and lemon, directions are within the text of this mascarpone and speck pizza recipe. If you are making this for a dip or sandwich spread, you could also use thick natural yogurt (like Greek yogurt) or cream cheese instead of mascarpone, but I insist, for pasta sauce, try the mascarpone, otherwise (if you can get it) stracchino, a creamy, very fresh cheese, or robiola, from the same cheese family are great, creamy options. You can use pine nuts instead of the walnuts. The lemon juice here helps enhance and preserve that beautiful colour so don’t leave it out.

Makes about 1 cup

1 small head of radicchio

1 garlic clove, peeled but whole

2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

juice of half a lemon

good pinch of salt

20 grams of walnut kernels (a couple of spoonfuls)

4 tablespoons of mascarpone

Peel off any rough outer leaves of the radicchio and discard. Chop the base of the radicchio head off and wash the leaves and roughly chop them. No need to dry them.

Place the garlic clove and olive oil in a pan and heat gently, allowing the oil to infuse with the garlic without browning too quickly. After a few minutes of gentle sizzling, you should begin to smell the garlic and it will be golden. Remove it and add the radicchio, the lemon juice and salt and toss for a few minutes over medium heat or until the radicchio begins to wilt.

Remove from the heat and let cool slightly. Blend the radicchio in a food processor along with the nuts until smooth. Once completely cool, stir through the mascarpone and taste for seasoning — you may like an extra squeeze of lemon, a bit more salt or some freshly ground pepper.

Serve immediately if you like, though it tends to gain a burst of colour when left overnight. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days in the fridge.

A peek at The Puglia Encounter Workshop, Masseria Potenti

One of the highlights of 2017 for me was hosting a food and styling workshop in late October together with two warm and talented women, Saghar Setareh of Labnoon and Alice Adams of Latteria Studio in Rome (for a group of equally wonderful women), in the most stunning location — Masseria Potenti in Puglia’s wine country of Manduria, in the province of Taranto.

I remember the excitement of touching down in Brindisi after an early morning flight from Rome and arriving at Masseria Potenti — as oasis-like as you can imagine, like walking into a dream — to the open arms of Chiara Tommasino, one half of Talea Events (run together with Valentina Guttuso), and her mother, the elegant, creative Maria Grazia Di Lauro (below).

I can barely find the words to describe how beautiful every corner of the Masseria is. An orange grove in one corner, a row of prickly pears along a courtyard, outdoor lounges, courtyards covered in carpets where lazy cats stroll, piles of quince sitting around, perfuming the place, cactus paddles with the prickly pears still attached hanging on nails around doorways, dried grapes, long after the harvest, still hanging from their pergolas. Everything was a sight to take in slowly. It made the most idyllic setting for making orecchiette by hand, or watching a basket weaver, for setting up a sultry still life, Labnoon-style, for writing, for shooting, for collecting fruit off the plentiful trees.

We shared all our meals together on long tables, decorated elaborately by the unstoppable Maria Grazia, who often was found in the kitchen herself, making brioche for breakfast, focaccia for dinner or sweet and sour peppers for aperitivo. We ate and ate and ate (it wouldn’t be Pugliese hospitality if plenty of delicious, garden-fresh food wasn’t offered continuously) and took a day trip to Grottaglie, a town of artisan potters (much more on that soon, it needs its own post), and I even snuck out to see the nearby coast one morning for a bit of wild plant foraging before the guests arrived — we all agreed the workshop was too short; next time the unbelievably cristalline water needs to be part of it all too.

To find out any workshops and events coming up this year, keep an eye on instagram or my events page for more information.

Ricotta gnocchi, a recipe from Ostro

I have known, and admired, Julia Busuttil Nishimura, for many years now and always felt connected through our love of Italian food, Tuscany (Julia lived in Florence and in Orbetello, just 10 minutes away from where we lived in Porto Ercole while I was writing Acquacotta) and Japan. So I have been eagerly awaiting her debut cookbook, Ostro: The Pleasure that Comes From Slowing Down and Cooking with Simple Ingredients, and it is a beauty — it is full of food I want to make and eat. It’s also a joy to look at, as it is presented so beautifully with photographs of Julia (and often her darling little boy Haruki) at home and tables full with food that look Caravaggesque.

I have already made her everyday banana loaf, several times, after years of searching for my ideal everyday cake, it is now my go-to banana loaf. I tested her ricciarelli (soft almond cookies from Siena) and pork braised in milk (a classic Italian dish that I have always loved) when she was writing the book and I have long-known her absolutely wonderful, incredibly moist lemon olive oil cake (which is also divine with blood oranges). I absolutely love her homemade approach to everything, including all the wonderful handmade pasta like trofie and orecchiette (look at those beautiful dishes below), but also things like classic tiramisu — homemade savoiardi, homemade mascarpone (yes and yes, I absolutely believe that for the freshest, most delicious mascarpone, it needs to be homemade especially if you live outside of Italy).

Yes, these are all things you can also buy in a packet, but Julia’s point is, it is a pleasure to make these things by hand, and the ingredients are so simple — water, flour, cream, eggs, — you probably have them all in your house already. She is a woman after my own heart. Her book inspires you to give it a go.

For me, I couldn’t resist the idea of ricotta gnocchi. I have made so many different types of gnocchi but I had never made a ricotta version. Sadly for potato gnocchi, I don’t think I’ll be making it very often anymore. Ricotta gnocchi is so pillowy, so quick to make and easy to handle, with such a delicate, delicious bite that I think I may only ever make ricotta gnocchi from now on.

Key to the recipe (and any recipe that involves making some kind of dumpling from ricotta, like spinach and ricotta gnudi), is good, firm ricotta. Outside of Italy, an Italian deli is the best bet, rather than the supermarket, and it may not be easy to come by so Julia recommends making your own. Once you have that, though, the rest is such a breeze, such a pleasure to make.

Julia’s recipe pairs ricotta gnocchi with a summer tomato sauce made from ripe cherry tomatoes, cooked down with garlic and basil (she also has a winter tomato sauce). Here I have paired them with caponata, a Sicilian vegetable stew of eggplants, zucchini, red peppers, onion and tomato cooked with a splash of vinegar. To be honest, they would really suit many different kinds of sauces, I wouldn’t hesitate to dress them with pesto (homemade, of course), ragu (I love Elizabeth David’s recipe) or even just some butter and parmesan — just keep it simple.

Ricotta gnocchi from Ostro

This is Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s ricotta gnocchi recipe from her debut cookbook, Ostro, published by Plum Books. Thank you to Julia and Plum for allowing me to share it here on my blog, after many requests for the recipe on instagram! Be sure to use well-drained, firm ricotta. It should be able to stand on its own!

400 grams fresh full-fat ricotta
2 egg yolks
pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
45 grams parmesan, grated
100-200 grams tupo 00 flour, plus extra for dusting
sea salt and black pepper

To make the dough, combine the ricotta, yolks, nutmeg and parmesan in a bowl and combine. Season with salt and pepper. Gradually add flour until you have a soft ball. You may or may not need all of the flour, so if it is still a bit sticky, work a little at a time until it is easy to handle.

Cut the dough into quarters and, working one piece at a time on a floured surface (wood is ideal for pasta making), roll into a long log, about 1.5cm (1/2 inch) in diameter. Using a knife or dough scraper, cut the dough into 2cm (3/4 inch) lengths to form the gnocchi. Cook them in salted, boiling water for 2-3 minutes or until cooked through. They should be floating at the top of the water and — taste one — should not taste like flour. Serve with your favourite sauce.

Trento Mini Guide and a Buckwheat Cake

Last month we spent a few wonderful days visiting our friends Rosa and Massimo who live just outside of Trento. It was our third visit to the area (on one of them I snapped up this recipe for persimmon cake), so I feel it’s about time to share some our favourite things that we’ve been shown by locals.

Trento is only a four hour drive from Florence — passing Bologna and Verona on the way, which could make very good pit stops if you feel the need to, FYI — yet it feels a world away in terms of the landscape and the food, from the golden, rolling hills of Tuscany. Cue towering mountains harbouring mushrooms and berries, lush valleys and turquoise lakes, vines grown on pergolas, enormous plates of sauerkraut and polenta in abundant portions, delicious wines and rustic cakes with German names.

Trento is the capital of Trentino, an unusual region of Italy because its official languages are Italian and German and it is actually made up of two self-governing provinces and is known as Trentino-Alto Adige or Trentino-Sudtirol. Confused? Since the eighth century, it has been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and only a century ago did it become Italian. It is squeezed between Lombardy and the Veneto to the west and southeast and to the north lies Austria and Switzerland. So it is no surprise that many of the food influences come from its neighbours — particularly the northern ones.

Eating in the region means eating heartily, even in the summer sunshine, we enjoyed abundant portions of canederli (large rustic dumplings made of bread, herbs and meat, ham or cheese in broth), masses of soft, creamy polenta with thinly sliced roast pork or sausage ragu and slow-cooked beans or thick venison steaks, sauerkraut and gnocchi (sometimes made of out of polenta). I think one waiter was highly disappointed that we weren’t able to finish our gargantuan plates one hot day on a mountain with a view of the Dolomites. Somehow there was always room for dessert, though — adopted from German and Austrian specialties, you can find cakes like black forest, schwarzplententorte (buckwheat cake, the recipe is below), sachertorte and linzertorte, often lathered with homemade, forest-picked berry jam and whipped cream.

A highlight visiting in late August was seeing the beginning of mushroom season in the form of market stalls in the pretty, pastel-tinted town of Trento, exploding with beautiful, local forest finds, from yolk-yellow chantarelles to large, fragrant porcini mushrooms. On the day of our arrival, our friends hosting us had been up at 5am to go porcini-gathering themselves so we were treated to a special dinner of fresh, woodsy porcini-coated pasta — and took home a kilo of irresistible chantarelles from the market.

This is one Italian region where you could say the wine might outshine the food and it’s worth spending the time visiting a few wineries. The ones in the guide below that we love are not only picturesque but well-equipped for visits with lovely tasting rooms.

Trento Mini Guide

Eat

Casa del Vino della Vallagarina — A wonderful place where you can drop in for a glass of wine, buy bottles to take home, dine at the restaurant or even sleep. Their enoteca is stocked with wine and other specialties from the region and the dining room (or terrace in the warm weather) offers an elegant, appealing menu.

Fichtenhof – This trattoria that sits atop Mount Corno with a stunning view over the valley below is a good starting point for a walk through the woods to work up the hearty appetite you’ll need for a meal of traditional delights here — think polenta with roast pork, gnocchi with lemon and wild herbs, apple strudel. Their kitchen garden (not to mention their backyard mountain forest) adds to the menu.

Gelateria Zenzero — Delicious, ‘natural’ gelato in the cute town of Borgo Sacco, not far from Rovereto, where you can sit riverside or wander the cobblestone streets. It also functions as a bistro but you may want to make a meal out of the gelato when you taste how good the daily offerings are (and when you see the giant “coppe” covered with fresh fruit coming out for people who know what to order.)

Drink

Dornach — A winery with a view run by biologist Karoline and her husband Patrick Uccelli, they produce extremely clean biodynamic, natural wines in the province of Bolzano. Their pinot bianco, pinot noir and an interesting macerated Gerwütztraminer that they simply call “G.” They also have a beautiful holiday apartment on the grounds that they rent out.

Eugenio Rosi — Eugenio and his wife, Tamara, specialise in Marzemino, one of the region’s native grapes, which they partially let dry on racks before pressing (an unusual step in the process). They use biodynamic principles even if they aren’t interested in gaining the certification for it. Don’t miss their cantina in a fourteenth century palazzo in the village of Calliano (Palazzo De Martin, Via III Novembre, Calliano), a very atmospheric place for a wine tasting.

Foradori — Elisabetta Foradori is a legend in the world of biodynamic wines. Her beautiful winery and wine tasting room is in the town Mezzalombardo, against a mountain backdrop, in the heart of teroldego country. She places great emphasis on biodiversity in the vineyard (which is interspersed with a beautiful vegetable garden, wild strawberries, fruit trees and a chicken coop) and is working on some very interesting wines fermented in terracotta amphora. In fact, her teroldago is something special to make your heart sing.

Visit

Lake Lases — A pretty alpine lake with clear blue waters, it’s a quiet place for a refreshing swim. It’s a great spot for kids because of its shallow edges (it does get to a depth of 25 meters though!) and shady trees, and older kids will like the rope for jumping into the deeper part of the lake.

Trento Markets — Trento is such a pretty, cobblestoned, pastel-hued city. The daily markets are in Piazza Vittoria and Piazza Erbe from 7am-1pm Monday to Saturday (on Saturdays it’s in Piazza Dante and Wednesdays in Piazza Filzi). Look out for seasonal specialties (in late summer that was wild blueberries and mushrooms) and the cheese stall selling the most delicious asiago cheese I’ve tasted.

Rovereto — A beautiful town dominated by a castle, a must visit here in Rovereto is MART, the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Torta di Granosaraceno

Buckwheat and jam cake

Known as schwarzplententorte in German or torta di granosaraceno in Italian, this is a very traditional recipe that reflects all of these aspects. It’s a simple, gluten-free cake, made wonderfully moist and dense with buckwheat, almond meal and grated apple (apples have a DOP — Protected Designation of Origin —  status here in Trentino), then filled with tart lingonberry jam and topped with a veil of powdered sugar. It’s usually eaten for breakfast together with a big mug of caffe latte — or as a morning or afternoon snack. 

The basic version of this recipe is without the apple (it can easily be eliminated from the recipe without changing the other proportions), while the oldest versions of this recipe call only for buckwheat flour, with almond meal (usually made by grinding whole almonds, skin on for colour) being a modern addition that adds to the dense crumb of this cake. Obligatory is the jam filling — you would normally find lingonberry jam (also known as mountain cranberries) used for this, we also saw local mountain blueberry jam. You could substitute cranberry or redcurrant jelly too, but if you do want to seek it out, try Ikea (lingonberry jam is also a national staple of Sweden!).

Serves 8

250 grams butter at room temperature

250 grams sugar

6 eggs, separated

250 grams buckwheat flour

250 grams almonds, skins on if possible, pulverised into almond meal

1 apple, peeled and grated

1 vanilla pod

200 gr of lingonberry jam (or similar)

1 heaped teaspoon of powdered sugar

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg yolks and beat until pale and creamy. Add the buckwheat, almond meal, grated apple and the scraped seeds of the vanilla pod until just combined.

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Gently fold in, bit by bit, into the batter until well combined and pour batter into a greased and lined round baking tin.

Bake at 180ºC/350ºF for about 50 minutes or until the cake is deep golden brown on top and a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. When cool enough to handle, remove cake from tin and slice in half lengthways. Spread the bottom layer with the lingonberry jam and replace the top layer. Just before serving, dust with powdered sugar.

Ricotta and spinach ‘gnudi’ video recipe

When I was writing the manuscript for Florentine, I enlisted the help of an army of recipe testers — about 80 people from all over the world — to test every recipe thoroughly.

Only one came back to me consistently with problems.

From Minnesota to Melbourne, three testers wrote to me that their very first attempt at making Tuscan gnudi (ricotta and spinach balls that, rather than be encased in pasta like for ravioli, are simply dusted in flour) resulted in a pot of simmering water with “dissolved” gnudi. It reminded me of Pellegrino Artusi’s potato gnocchi recipe in his famous cookbook from 1891, where he interrupts the recipe instructions to mention a signora who, upon attempting to stir the gnocchi cooking in the pot, finds they have disappeared – O dove’erano andati? “Where did they go?”

In the case of the gnocchi, there was too little flour used, according to Artusi. But in the case of the gnudi, I already had a hunch. I grilled all three testers on a number of various factors — was the water just simmering, not on a rolling boil (which can destroy delicate gnudi), did they drain the spinach very well, and equally the ricotta (one said she even drained it overnight)? Did they use “proper” ricotta? Aha.

“Proper” ricotta. The kind that was only made a day or so earlier, the leftovers of the cheese-making process, the real deal. The kind that you can see in a deli counter, standing on its own, that gets cut into a big wedge and weighed when you order it. Not the kind you buy at the supermarket, in a tub, that so often is grainy, more like the consistency of yogurt, has no structure, and is full of unnecessary gums or additives. All my recipe testers had used the second kind — to be fair, some were new to the idea of buying ricotta and in their neighbourhood only had access to this. In that case, it would have probably been better to make your own, or choose another recipe.

They retested with a “proper” ricotta and found that was it — the key to gnudi success! I didn’t need to change my recipe, but, with this experience, I reiterated in the cookbook the need for a very good ricotta.

Now I understood the reason why in Tuscany you find gnudi recipes don’t use flour inside the mixture, only as a dusting outside, while so many English recipes for gnudi call for flour in the mixture too. It’s more stable, I realise, but it is less traditional and it is also less desirable. No flour in the mixture means these gnudi remain incredibly delicate and oh so pillowy — the extra flour makes them gummy and tough, even bouncy, and more like potato gnocchi, which are another thing all together. Gnudi are simply “nude”, as their name implies, because they are minus their ravioli pasta clothing.

Ricotta and Spinach Gnudi

From “Florentine: The True Cuisine of Florence” (published by Hardie Grant, 2016)

Serves 4

350 grams of firm ricotta, well-drained
300 grams of cooked, chopped, well-drained spinach (if making from scratch, you need about 1 kg of fresh leaves)
2 eggs, beaten
a pinch of salt, plus more for the water
a pinch of ground nutmeg
about 50 grams of plain flour
50 grams of unsalted butter
20 sage leaves
salt and pepper for seasoning
handful of finely grated Parmesan cheese, to serve
Mix the ricotta, finely chopped spinach, eggs, pinch of salt and nutmeg together in a mixing bowl. You should have a thick, compact mixture.

Place the flour in a shallow bowl.

With hands, roll walnut-sized spoonfuls of the gnudi mixture in your hands, and then in the flour until well-coated. Place on a lightly-floured board until they are all ready.

Prepare a large pot of water (salted with a spoonful of salt) and bring to a simmer. Carefully drop the gnudi into the water and cook for about 4-5 minutes or until they begin to float to the surface.

In the meatime, prepare the sauce by melting the butter in a wide pan over medium heat with the sage leaves. When butter is melted and before it begins to brown, add about 2-3 spoonfuls of the gnudi water and swirl the pan to create a thick sauce. Season with salt and pepper.

When gnudi are ready, remove them from the water with a slotted spoon and place in the sauce. Turn heat to low and swirl to coat the gnudi gently with the sauce. Serve immediately with the cheese.