Emiko Davies's Blog, page 6

Making Prosciutto di Cinta Senese with Sergio Falaschi

I have long been taking advice from my friend and favourite butcher, Andrea Falaschi (above), a fourth generation butcher who goes by @guidofalaschi, the name of his great grandfather who first opened the family butcher shop in 1925 in San Miniato. We share the same passion for ethically and sustainably raised free-range animals, Tuscan traditions and quality over quantity when it comes to eating meat.

Andrea works with his father, Sergio, in the butcher shop and laboratory where they make their famous, artian salumi, prosciutto and sausages, and his mother Lina, who makes fresh preparations for clients to cook at home like stuffed chicken (pollo in galantina), filetto in crosta (pork fillet to be roasted inside bread crust) and spiedini. Before the pandemic, Lina also headed a wonderful restaurant at the back of the butcher shop, which happens to have one of the best views in town!

They work directly with local farmers – just as Andrea’s great grandfather Guido did – who have the same values, and that same care goes into everything they do. They make, amongst many things, San Miniato’s only Slow Food presidium, mallegato, a spiced winter blood sausage, my favourite truffle sausages and precious prosciutto di Cinta Senese, made from an ancient Tuscan pig breed that is only raised free range and has a natural diet of foraged acorns, tubers and roots. One day I’ll go into more detail on the mallegato and other specialties but today I wanted to share their process of making prosciutto, which they do for their own butcher shop and also for other well known farmers and producers around Tuscany.

I was recently invited to visit the Falaschi laboratory, which is in the countryside just 5km from the butcher shop in the historical centre of San Miniato (and a few minutes walk from our new home!). I brought my 8 year old, who loves prosciutto and helped me document the experience! Everything is done by hand, from the filling of finocchiona and salumi in their natural casings, to all the tying, with all natural products according to ancient traditions. We watched the Cinta Senese prosciutto being made – prized for its juicy and tasty meat and its thick, delicious layer of fat. You can always tell it’s a certified Cinta breed (it is a DOP product, aka protected designation of origin) because the hooves are left on the prosciutto to differentiate them from regular prosciutto.

First the prosciutto legs are rolled with a rolling pin to remove any excess blood at the socket. Then they are painted with a mix of garlic, sugar and water. Over goes a heavy sprinkle of ground pepper, then coarse salt all the way down to the hoof (above). They stay like this for 3 days then are hung to cure in an air-temperature controlled room. They take 60 days all together from start to finish! That’s it, time and a few essential curing ingredients, no preservatives or additives.

Cinta senese is a truly ancient pork breed native to Tuscany’s province of Siena (as its name suggests) — it is thought that they were raised even in Roman times. There is a well known fresco by Ambrogio Lorenzetti on the Palazzo del Comune di Siena, painted in 1338, that depicts a farmer with a Cinta Senese pig — easily identified by the thick white band or cinta (belt) across its otherwise black body, which is still how it looks today. A century ago it was the breed of pig that most Tuscan farmers would have kept, however, after the second world War their numbers fell drastically — partly due to the fact that after the war, the prolific Danish and English breeds were introduced. Sadly, this happened all across Italy and during the 20th century many native pigs died out — in 1927 there were 21 heirloom breeds native to Italy and today there are only six, including the Cinta Senese. Luckily from the 1970-1980s, some passionate farmers helped bring them back from the brink of extinction.

In the year 2000 the Consorzio di Cinta Senese, a voluntary group that determine the rules and regulations in which this heirloom pig should be raised, was created and by 2012 it was awarded DOP status. Certified Cinta Senese are born, raised and butchered in Tuscany. They are pure bred, live free range with an enormous amount of space (usually in woods or partially wooded areas, no more than 10 animals per hectare or 2.5 acres) and forage for their food. During the months where there is less around, their diet can be integrated with a small percentage of cereals, legumes, seeds, fresh fruit and vegetables, 60% of which must be Tuscan — more or less replicating the Tuscan traditions of centuries past.

Truffle, artichoke and anchovy (ancient grain, sourdough) pizza

Christmas may be upon us but since 2020 is a very different kind of year and we will be just us, I feel we can do something kind of different for Christmas too. Homemade pizza is something we have always loved making but to make it special I thought I might put truffle on it so we came up with this rather unusual combination — but oh it works so well!

We recently moved from Florence to my husband’s hometown, San Miniato, which is half an hour from both Florence and Pisa. It’s a charming hill top town that I’ve written about often, even before moving here, and one of the main attractions, other than the views and affordability, is the fact that this is the heartland of Tuscan truffles.

I’ve been testing out some different truffle products that are on offer in San Miniato (spoiler alert, we are hoping to very shortly share with you a special, curated box of delicious things, including truffle products!) and one of the things that got me curious was an artichoke and truffle paste. The first thing I thought was — what a Tuscan combination! Artichokes and truffles are two classic Tuscan ingredients available in the winter. The second thing I thought was, how have I never thought about this combination before?! We smothered it onto a pizza base in place of tomato sauce, added some anchovies (because I love anchovies, especially on pizza, and did you know anchovies and truffles go hand in hand as well?), and fresh mozzarella right at the end. It was spectacular!

I also wanted to share this recipe for an unusual pizza dough (to add to our other pizza dough recipes, including this Roman style pizza dough, and this Florentine ‘bar style’ pizza dough from my cookbook Florentine), which we changed from our usual favourite because we were working with an interesting flour that has very little gluten. It’s grown organically and stone ground here in San Miniato with a ‘tipo 2’ wheat called ‘Gentil Rosso’, an ancient Tuscan grain which a century ago was grown widely all over Italy but has now almost disappeared because of the fact that it has very little gluten in it and it was replaced by more productive modern grains.

An aside on ancient grain flour and its strength

This ancient grain flour’s strength, measured by W index, is only 42 (a soft ‘tipo 00’ flour could have a W index of around 90-180, regular all purpose flour around 250, while strong flour like Manitoba flour has a W index of 400). So there are a few things to consider when using a very ‘weak’ flour. The stronger the flour, the more resistant it is to leavening and needs to rise longer, so technically this weak flour doesn’t need a long rise (but we did, a couple times, and we liked the results). The stronger the flour, the more water the flour can absorb too — Manitoba can absorb 90% of its weight in water, while a tipo 00 can take more like 50%. We pushed this too, and the result is a sticky, wet dough that you will mould with yur hands rather than roll out.

In general the weaker flours are more ideal for making biscuits and cakes, while stronger flours for things like sourdough bread (and the ones in between for pizza). But we went ahead and tried this very weak ancient ground flour out for pizza anyway! My husband Marco (the passionate baker in the house), aimed for a 65% hydration at the suggestion of Emanuele Bianucci, the producer of this Gentil Rosso flour. Marco used his sourdough starter (boosted by a pinch of dried yeast) but you could use directly yeast too.

We loved it because it made an absolutely delicious, perfumed, soft style pizza crust that, as Italians like to point out, is more easily digested. We also made schiacciata from this dough, scented with rosemary and olive oil, and it was impossible to stop eating it!

Truffle, artichoke and anchovy ancient grain sourdough pizza

If using regular flour or you don’t have sourdough starter, you may like our Roman style pizza dough recipe, but if you are attempting a pizza dough with a weak, ancient grain, low gluten flour, give this dough recipe a go! It is best made the morning before you want to cook the pizza. I used an artichoke paste but if you can’t get the paste, use quartered marinated artichokes and chop or blend them yourself into a paste.

For 2 x 30cm diameter pizzas

For the sourdough pizza:

100 grams sourdough starter

290 ml water

pinch of active dried yeast/instant yeast

420 grams ‘tipo 2’ ancient grain flour (we used ‘Gentil Rosso’ W42)

60 ml extra virgin olive oil, plus more for topping

10 gr salt

For the pizza topping:

350 gr buffalo mozzarella (or burrata) at room temperature

180 gr artichoke paste (or marinated artichokes in quarters, see note)

8-10 anchovy fillets (the best quality you can afford)

1 small truffle, thinly sliced

To make the dough by hand, combine the starter with the water and a pinch of dried yeast in a large bowl and whisk together. Add half of the flour and whisk into a batter. Add the olive oil and salt and combine. Add the rest of the flour little by little until well incorporated – switch to a spatula, wooden spoon or hands to mix at this point. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes, then mix the dough, from bottom to top, almost like folding it, a few times, every 30 minutes for a total of 4 times/2 hours. Cover and leave to rise in the fridge 8 hours (or overnight).

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 230C (450F).

Divide the wet dough into 2 portions and plop them onto well-oiled pizza trays and spread out evenly with (oiled) hands. Place spoonfuls of the artichoke paste here and there all over the pizza bases and then, with the back of the spoon, roughly spread the paste around the base to cover lightly. Add anchovy fillets (I like to keep them whole and use them as ‘markers’ where the pizza will be sliced but you can chop and scatter if you prefer) and a good drizzle of olive oil.

Bake in hot oven (remember to swap the pizzas around so that they get even time on the lowest shelf; if baking one at a time, keep it on the lowest shelf) for 18-20 minutes of until the crusts are golden brown and the toppings are sizzling furiously. At the last moment, throw over the mozzarella and leave 1 more minute, just enough for it to go lovely and soft but not melt. Remove from the oven, scatter over the truffle slices and serve immediately with another good drizzle of olive oil.

Chestnut panforte, a gluten free and vegan treat

This is a slightly untraditional variation on the most traditional recipe I know for panforte — a sweet, dense, spicy medieval cake from Siena. The recipe comes from the bible of Tuscan cooking, Paolo Petroni’s Il Grande Libro della Vera Cucina Toscana and every time I make panforte (since I first posted about it back in 2011) I make some kind of variation on his recipe. To be honest, I usually don’t deviate from it much unless there’s something I can’t find — even in Tuscany, that candied melon he calls for can be hard to procure! Often I might simply play around with proportions of spices, more black pepper, a little less cinnamon. Or, if I have it, I go with the spice mix Tuscan’s call, droghe, drugs, which are bought by the weight in little neighbourhood alimentari, wrapped in paper.

But this time I wanted to try something quite different, and I used chestnut flour, which you can find in Tuscany from about October to March in place of regular flour. It makes such a delicious seasonal version, and although it’s not a traditional part of panforte’s long history, the flavour of chestnuts is so Tuscan that it feels like it’s meant to be in here.

Panforte generally has only a few variations. There’s panpepato, which is a very spicy version, with it’s top covered in a layer of black pepper (pepato means peppered) in place of the icing sugar — it tastes positively medieval and is just the thing to warm you on a wintery day with an espresso. On the other side of the scale, there is a very delicate version known as Panforte Margherita. Invented in 1879 in honour of Queen Margherita of Savoy’s visit to Siena, it’s made using candied citron instead of the melon and vanilla instead of the characteristically heady spices. The citron makes it ‘blonder’ than the classic, dark panforte.

Down the bottom of Tuscany in Monte Argentario and Giglio Island is what I would call the long lost cousin of panforte, panficato – made similarly but with dried figs in place of the candied fruit. I have that recipe in Acquacotta and it is something like a figgy brownie, with only flour holding the fruit, chocolate and spices together, shaped into a rustic loaf.

The main ingredient in panforte is candied fruit— so it should be something you are already particularly fond of and, if you can, I strongly recommend using a good one, either homemade or artisan-made rather than industrial, pre-chopped bits. It’s not a cheap option but it makes a world of difference and I would go as far as to say it’s probably not worth making if you can’t get the good stuff.

Not having candied melon in lockdown, I use candied citron like the panforte Margherita (or try dried figs like the panficato of the coast). Use whatever nuts you like best — almonds are traditional but since this is an untraditional panforte, I think hazelnuts or walnuts would go particularly well with the chestnut flavours.

This makes such a lovely treat for Christmas. Like many fruit dense Christmas cakes (the little ones in the photo below are Belinda Jeffrey’s Christmas cake), panforte lasts weeks and weeks and you only need tiny portions at a time because it is so sweet and dense. It makes a nice gift too, if you make one big one like this, cut into slices and wrap in greaseproof paper before wrapping in pretty paper (you can also make this in small tins, just note that the panforte should be about 2cm tall). Oh and did I mention, it’s gluten free and vegan too?

Chestnut Panforte

I recommend having all the ingredients ready before you add the syrup as once this gets added it can harden to a point where it becomes difficult to handle (especially if your kitchen is quite cold). If this happens, you simply need to warm the mixture gently and then it becomes easier to pat into the cake tin. If you can, use whole spices and grind them just before using in a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder for maximum flavour. You may be timid about using pepper, but I can’t stress how important the flavour of the black pepper is in here, go for one whole teaspoon of it!

Serves 12

350 grams candied citron

50 grams candied orange peel

200 grams whole peeled almonds, walnuts or hazelnuts

4 teaspoons ground spices (coriander seeds, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper)

150 grams chestnut flour, sifted

300 grams white sugar

Icing sugar for dusting

Grease and line a 24-26 cm cake tin with baking paper and heat the oven to 160C (320F)

Chop the candied fruit into very small diced pieces and place in a large bowl. Add the nuts, the spices and the sifted chestnut flour (it tends to be lumpy, don’t skip the sifting) and set aside.

Place the sugar in 100 ml of water in a saucepan over low heat. Let it dissolve and thicken very slightly into a syrup, about 5 minutes of simmering should do it, do not let it colour into a caramel (it should reach 120C, if you have a sugar thermometer).

Pour the syrup off the heat and mix with the candied fruit mixture until just combined. Tip the mixture immediately into the cake tin and flatten/smooth out with a nonstick spatula (or dust the top with some extra cinnamon and then use your hands to pat it out). Bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown and the top is firm to the touch. Allow to cool completely in the tin. Before serving, cover generously with icing sugar.

It keeps very well stored in a cool, dark place.

Garibaldi Innamorato’s Zuppa Corsa, a fish soup from the Tuscan coast

The supermarket was offering the prettiest fish plucked out if the waters of the Tuscan arcipelago last night — so fresh they smell of the sea and are still in rigor mortis — for a steal, 6 euro a kilo. Look at how bright eyed and beautiful they are! These small fish — a mixture of different types of sea bream known as fragolino (the pink one, known as pandora in English) and mormora (striped sea bass, with the yellow stripe on his cheeks), along with gallinella (gurnard), scorfano (scorpion fish) are labelled as pesce da zuppa, fish for soup, or sometimes paranza, for frying whole, because of their pint size. Often there are some triglie (red mullet) in the mix too.

Tuscany alone has 400 km of coastline and 7 islands and there are many good Tuscan fish soups (let alone the ones found all over the country!), the most famous being Cacciucco from Livorno, a huge, minimum 2 person type dish made with thirteen different types of seafood. But there’s another, very memorable one for me that I had many years ago a little south of Livorno. We were in the port city of Piombino (the mainland stop if you’re on the way to Elba Island) on a very cold blustery autumn day, at Garibaldi Innamorato — an appealing choice I had selected out of that year’s Slow Food restaurant guide. What got me was that they only use the freshest fish of the day so the menu is never the same, it’s always unexpected, except for one mainstay, the Zuppa Corsa or Corsican soup.

Before you wonder why you’d have Corsican soup in Tuscany, look up Piombino on a map and you will see about 100 km to the east, on the other side of Elba island, is the finger-point of Cap Corse, Corsica. It’s closer than Florence. You can see it on a clear day easily from here. Well, we had to have their famous Zuppa Corsa, where the thick, smooth, rust-hued fish soup is ceremoniously spooned out of a tureen over a plate of toasted crostini previously topped with grated cheese and a dollop of pink rouille sauce (it’s a bit like an aioli but spiced with chilli and often paprika, however at Garibaldi Innamorato, they make theirs — interestingly — with housemade mayonnaise and harissa). It sounds odd in the regular context of Tuscan fare — fish with cheese is just not a thing in this part of Italy, creamy mayonnaise isn’t particularly either. But oh it works!

If you are already familiar with French bouillabaisse, then it’s not too dissimilar from the famous soup of Marseilles. Yet it is also different. In bouillabaisse, similar fish is used (traditionally also eel and shell fish) but the soup base is decidedly more Provençal, which in Julia Child’s description means, garlic, onions, tomatoes, olive oil, fennel, saffron, thyme, bay, and usually a bit of dried orange peel. You may even find potatoes or sea urchin, and it is served with rouille sauce on toasted bread at the bottom of the plate. The boiled fish is eaten after the soup course. The Corsican soup base is more rustic and very similar to smooth, brothy Tuscan fish soups like minestra di pesce which you might eat with pasta in it, and this zuppa Certosina from a Tuscan monastery. Oh and then there’s the Swiss cheese. A must – you could probably use another type of cheese but make sure it is mild and melty.

Just thinking about this warming, delicious dish, at once creamy, cheesy and yet tasting of the freshest Tuscan seafood, made me dream of heading back to Piombino as soon as lockdown is over. In the meantime it also had me looking up the rouille sauce recipe right away, while Marco was already cleaning the fish.

I followed a recipe for the rouille from the Silver Spoon, the main tweak being that Marco insisted on a hint of tabasco going in there! The soup part of the recipe was all Marco. It doesn’t usually have the calamari in there but we couldn’t resist as those were on display too and very fresh. Rather than the entire soup being blended smooth, he left the fish in pieces but this is a matter of taste. One thing I will say is that if you have a mouli/passaverdura/passatutto, it is an old fashioned contraption but a great help in making fish soup with whole fish this way as it gets rid of the bones and unwanted bits while filtering through the wanted bits. If you don’t have one, you can blend with an immersion blender, but do be careful of small bones.

Zuppa Corsa inspired by Garibaldi Innamorato

Serves 4-6 (four as a main dish, 6 as an first course)

1 kg small fish for soup (sea bream, scorpion fish, gurnard, red mullet), gutted and scaled

4 small calamari, whole if very small, or cut into large pieces and cleaned (optional)

2 garlic cloves

1 small red onion, thinly sliced

Handful of chopped fresh parsley stalks

1 whole fresh chilli, chopped

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon of tomato paste

500 ml wine (red or white) or fish stock

500 ml tomato passata

4 large slices of sourdough or country style bread, cut into crostini sized pieces.

50 grams of Swiss cheese, grated

Rouille sauce

1 egg yolk

2 slices of soft white bread soaked in a bit of fish stock or milk

1 garlic clove

Fresh or dried chilli (or cayenne pepper)

Pinch of salt

80ml extra virgin olive oil

Any very small fish can go in whole, but you may like to skin and fillet the larger ones (keep the heads).

In a saucepan, place garlic, onion, parsley stalks and chilli, pour over 3 tablespoons of the olive oil and bring to a low heat, letting everything sizzle and soften gently for about 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the tomato paste, turn heat up to medium and stir it across the pan, you want to toast it a bit to bring out the flavour but not let it burn, 1 minute or so. Add fish heads and whole fish, and brown them on the outside a few minutes. Then add the wine, a good pinch of salt and bring to a simmer. Let cook 10 minutes, uncovered and it should reduce slightly. Add the passata along with 500 ml of water and let simmer 30 minutes gently. Taste and adjust salt to your liking.

Pass it through a mouli or sieve. It’s meant to be smooth but we actually kept larger pieces of fish in there. If you would like to do it that way, keep the fish pieces you filleted earlier for the next step. If you would like the smooth version, add the fish fillets to the soup and continue simmering 2-3 minutes, then pass through the mouli.

If using the calamari, in a separate pan, heat a little oil and over medium-high heat roast the calamari for 1 minute then add to the soup and continue cooking 10 minutes. Add the fish pieces the last 2 minutes of cooking. Keep the soup warm, this should be served nice and hot.

While the soup is simmering, you can toast the bread for crostini and set them in a dish to place on the table, maybe wrapped inside a linen napkin to keep warm.

For the sauce, use a pestle and mortar or an immersion blender to blend all the ingredients except the oil until creamy, about 1 minute. Add the oil a little at a time, whisking or blending it in for a smooth, creamy sauce. Taste for salt or heat. (Marco likes a drop of Tabasco in this but I prefer without!)

Spoon the rouille sauce into a small bowl and set it on the table, along with the grated Swiss cheese. Place the soup in a tureen with a lid and ladle. To serve, place crostini in the bottom of the bowls, top each with rouille sauce and a sprinkle of cheese. Spoon the hot soup over the top and let it sit for a minute or so then enjoy.

Introducing the new edition of Florentine

My first baby, Florentine: The True Cuisine of Florence, which I started writing in 2014, was published in 2016. And this month it has been launched in Australia and the UK (the US will have to wait a few more months until 9 February 2021) with a brand new look! It has a slightly smaller format to the original, still hardback only, and a moodier, darker, beautiful marbled cover.

The recipes and photographs are the same as the original, where I was mindful to include the most Florentine dishes you can find, but in this edition I have also written a brand new guide to eating and drinking in Florence! This is my most comprehensive list — all my favourites, in short form (such as a quick list, where all you need is a glance, and even a 24 hours in Florence suggestion), and in long form (descriptive reviews of my favourite Florentine restaurants), with plenty of photographs and even suggestions for shopping for gourmands — alongside my address book for Florence.

To celebrate the release of my new edition, my publishers Hardie Grant Books are giving away 5 copies of the new Florentine anywhere worldwide! To enter and see those details, just tell me about what you love about Florence on my latest Instagram post. Winners will be drawn on Sunday 15 November 2020 and contacted on Instagram.

I’m so proud of this book, it was the dream cookbook I always wanted to write (if you want to read more about the making of Florentine, head to this article in Good Food Australia), and I’m so grateful that my publishers wanted to give it a new life and re-release it with this new look. Thank you, as always, to Jane Willson, my publisher at Hardie Grant Books, book designer Allison Colpoys, who together with Kasia Gadecki created the marbled covers of the original and new edition, and recipe photographer Lauren Bamford, stylist Deb Kaloper, home economist Caroline Griffiths. Thank you also to my family and thank YOU, my readers, for all your support over the years!

Savoury bread pudding cake with prunes, caprino and pumpkin

Back home from a whirlwind trip to Venice with a new set of Covid-19 regulations that means it’s time for a lot of baking (and staying at home).

This is a savory bread pudding cake, which as far as I can tell isn’t really a thing but it is the best way I can describe it. Basically it is an excellent way to use up leftovers — stale bread, milk and eggs make the body of the cake, then add whatever you have in the fridge, leftover bits of cheese, some pancetta, that sort of thing. The bread part of the this savoury cake is based on the bread and apple cake that I wrote for the Financial Times during lockdown, I often make it when I have loads of stale bread lying around that I can’t bear to throw away (like all that sourdough we made during lockdown!), plus sugar, a couple of apples and a swirl of jam, but this savoury version has prunes, roast pumpkin, walnuts and caprino, a creamy, mild goat’s cheese.

It is inspired by a wonderful savoury cake by Rachel Khoo that a friend once baked me years ago that I can still taste when I close my eyes, it had prunes, goat cheese and pistachios in it and she describes it as perfect for a picnic. I added the roast pumpkin as a last minute thought as I had just bought a beautiful Mantova pumpkin (quite similar in terms of flavour and texture to Japanese kabocha pumpkins which remind me of eating boiled chestnuts) that are now in season.

Thick slices toasted with a blob of salted butter this morning for breakfast were heavenly. It’s like a sweet-savoury French toast. Because the caprino is so mild but tangy and the other ingredients are sweet, you could easily take this to the sweet side topped with some honey and butter, or give it a more savoury edge with layers of prosciutto or crispy pancetta, which would make a delicious lunch next to a salad of bitter radicchio. If you prefer it cheesier (a bit like these cheesy stale bread ‘tortine’) and decidedly more savoury, add a handful of Parmesan or a good melty cheese to the mixture before baking. It really is a blank canvas for whatever flavour combinations (or things hanging about in the fridge) that you happen to have.

Savoury bread pudding loaf with prunes, caprino and pumpkin

400 grams of stale country style bread or sourdough (about half a large loaf)

500-700 ml of warm milk

120 grams of pumpkin, diced (Kabocha, Mantovana or butternut squash are great)

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 eggs, beaten

70 grams of melted butter

200 grams caprino (soft goat’s curd)

1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder

Generous pinch of salt

100 grams of dried prunes, chopped roughly

70 grams walnut pieces

Roughly cut the bread into thick cubes and place in a bowl. Pour over warm milk (if you are using rock hard bread you may need up to 700 ml) and let sit until the bread is soft enough to crumble by hand (about 15 minutes or leave it overnight in the fridge if needed). If you have very hard crusts that don’t break down these may need to be cut off and discarded. You can also blend the bread mixture with an immersion blender or food processor, if you have it, but I usually crumble it by hand.

Cook the pumpkin in a small skillet in the olive oil over medium heat until well roasted around the edges and tender. Set aside to cool.

Heat the oven to 180 C.

In a small bowl, whisk the eggs, butter and goats cheese with a fork until roughly combined, and then evenly stir through the soft bread mixture along with the baking powder and salt.

Add the walnuts, prunes and the pumpkin and stir through the distribute evenly.

Pour into a greased and lined large loaf tin and bake for about 45 minutes or until the top of the cake is golden brown and springy to the touch. Delicious warm right out of the oven, but perhaps my favourite way is over the next day or two, cut into thick slices and toasted on a pan until browned then topped with very good butter. Keep leftovers of this cake wrapped well and store in the fridge.

Tuscan spice pumpkin bread, a tale of forgotten drugs

I am quite aware that this title sounds a bit ridiculous — because there is no such thing as Tuscan spice pumpkin bread and it sounds like one of those recipes that I see online and abhor, that has nothing at all to do with Tuscany, like “Tuscan salad dressing” (no such thing exists in Tuscany, we just use olive oil and a wine vinegar of choice). But this time Tuscan spice really is a thing and it’s a fascinating thing too, something also sadly disappearing and not very well known. A heady mix of spices and an unlikely pairing of ingredients go into this mix, which is called droghe (drugs!) and is sold by the weight from a disappearing culture of food shops. Its name comes from an ancient term that covered not what we think of now as drugs but all manner of pharmaceuticals, in particular, plants, herbs and seeds that were used for medicinal purposes. And pharmacists were those who, in centuries past, would have kept spices too. Today in Florence, Bizzarri is one of those shops that looks like it has remained unchanged for 150 years and it is still where I go today for hard to find whole spices like mace.

My mother in law’s grandfather, Angiolo, who built the house she lives in, was the owner of a bar and alimentari (a food shop, or deli), where his wife Maria churned out aniseed biscotti and cakes, where they sliced salami and prosciutto, supplied pecorino for grating and fresh bread, dried pasta, salt, pepper and other spices, everything by the weight and packaged in paper. Their “droghe” were sold, like all spices and salt, alongside the tobacco.

The droghe mix can contain spices such as cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, aniseed, fennel or perhaps liquorice, pepper, star anise, coriander seed, juniper berries, dried orange zest. It’s also the same mix of spiced commonly used in salumi-making to spice Tuscan salami, soprassata or sausages.

There is a shop in my mother in law’s town — one of those shops that is unchanged by time — that still sells droghe by the weight. The signora of the shop pulls down a white container from a shelf labelled “spezie toscane” (Tuscan spices), weighs out a scoop for me and packages it in a piece of paper to take home — she shares with me that to the usual mix of ground spices, they add raisins, pine puts and chunks of chocolate. It’s mostly used for gamey stews — it’s perfect for a sweet and savoury Tuscan wild boar and chocolate stew known as cinghiale in dolceforte, and it works very well with hare too, although that is a rare dish these days. It’s a similar mixture of spices also used in the medieval panforte, a dense, rich, heavily spiced fruitcake from Siena. Both these well known dishes taste of the Renaissance, with that wonderful spice mix being the hero, and the highlight.

This pumpkin bread is made with mostly buckwheat but you can use regular flour in its place, I personally love the nuttiness of buckwheat in a cake like this (also in this incredible apple cake from Danielle Alvarez). Buckwheat is naturally gluten free so if you are looking for a completely gluten free cake, you can use almond meal/ground almonds in place of the flour. We all know that pumpkin in cake is just another vehicle (just as with carrot cake or zucchini bread) for a delicious, tender cake full of spices. So rather than use the classic, American style spice mix (often labelled “pumpkin spice”) which is a usually a mixed blend of cinnamon, ginger, cloves and allspice, I used this special Tuscan blend of “drugs”. I wanted to include raisins and pine nuts in this too but you can leave them off or use dates or chunks of dark chocolate instead of the raisins, and walnuts, almonds or hazelnuts instead of pine nuts.

I made this with a simple glaze using the juice from the zested orange, sprinkled with pine nuts, but alternatively you can enjoy this unglazed, warm right out of the oven lathered with some butter. Add the pine nuts to the batter if you like instead.

Tuscan spiced pumpkin bread (Torta di zucca con le droghe)

For the Tuscan droghe spices, combine the following ground spices in equal amounts: cinnamon, ginger, cloves, fennel seed, coriander seed, nutmeg. Keep in a jar and use as you please.

125 gr butter, softened
150 grams light brown sugar
2 eggs
300 gr of fresh pumpkin boiled and mashed
1-2 tsp droghe spice mix (above)
1 tsp cinnamon
Zest and juice of an orange
150 gr buckwheat flour
65 gr flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Pinch of salt
50 gr raisins, optional
100 gr powdered sugar (icing sugar)

Preheat oven to 180C and line a load tin with baking paper or grease with butter.

Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy and pale. Add the eggs and continue beating until well incorporated. Add the pumpkin mash, along with the spices and orange zest (reserve the juice for later) and now fold through the buckwheat, flour, baking powder and salt. Once the flour is well incorporated, stir through the raisins, if using. Pour into the prepared loaf tin and bake until the cake is well risen and the spices begin perfuming the kitchen. A cake tester inserted in the middle should come out clean, about 40-50 minutes.

Allow to cool and in the meantime, toast the pine nuts in a dry pan until golden, shaking them the entire time so they don’t stay in one spit too long and burn. Prepare the the orange glaze by mixing the powdered sugar with a teaspoon at a time of the freshly squeezed orange juice until it slides thickly off a spoon. Sprinkle over the toasted pine nuts and allow to set before slicing.

Prosciutto and pea pasta (Paglia e fieno alla fiesolana)

As family meals go, we are slowly but surely developing a repertoire of meals that all four of us — including the picky eater — can eat together and nothing makes my heart more full than a meal that we can make and enjoy together. To add to the growing list of favourites, Tuscan spiedini di carne (skewers of meat, sausage, bay leaf and bread), spaghetti con le vongole, my mother’s tamago no gohan (a simple stir fry of egg and rice, which I serve with dried seaweed and furikake and always results in empty bowls and requests for more) and my pantry staple, polpette di tonno (tuna croquettes), is this delicious pasta sauce, which goes by several names but the one I like best, for nostalgic reasons, is alla fiesolana, Fiesole style.

We are shortly moving house, from Settignano, a beautiful hilltop quarter of Florence near Fiesole, where we have called home for four years, to San Miniato, my husband Marco’s birth place. We have sadly but sweetly outgrown our tiny hilltop apartment with its even tinier kitchen, the room where we play, relax, cook and eat together. Mariù and Luna, who are 7 and 2, know their way around that kitchen and it’s here where they have become experts at cracking eggs and cranking a pasta machine – whenever they see me pull it out, they always want to be involved.

I always find it fun to turn a pasta making session into an activity for the girls — it is one of the things that got us through lockdown! Actually I shot all of these photographs while in the middle of lockdown for an article on our family meals that appeared in Corriere della Sera — so this pretty style of tagliatelle known as ‘paglia e fieno’, or straw and hay, was an excuse to get them playing in the kitchen. It’s a combination of egg and spinach pasta (hence the reference to straw and hay for the colours) from Emilia-Romagna. I found a similar recipe in the Silver Spoon with speck, rosemary, parmesan and cream as the sauce, simply called tagliatelle paglia e fieno, but otherwise I haven’t found any particularly old recipes or even old references to this so-called “Fiesole” sauce, making me think this is simply a newer, popular combination.

Truth be told, we most often make this with store bought pasta — penne is our favourite. It’s a delicious sauce, creamy, with a salty pop of prosciutto, the sweetness of peas, a hint of garlic and herbs — everyone loves it, even though one picks out the prosciutto and one picks out the peas, you can’t deny that the sauce that clings to the pasta is so good you want to lick the plate afterwards!

Pasta paglia e fieno alla fiesolana

Fiesole style pasta with prosciutto and peas

If you don’t have a pasta machine you can use any store-bought dried or fresh pasta for this, we also like it with penne (use 80 grams of dried pasta a head for adults, I usually calculate about 50-60 grams for the kids). The sauce is so quick to make that this makes an ideal weekday dinner or lunch – skip ahead to the last step if doing just the sauce!

Serves 4

For the pasta:

3 eggs

50 grams of cooked spinach

400 grams of flour (tipo 00 or all purpose)

For the sauce:

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

100 grams prosciutto, cut into thin strips

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

4-6 sage leaves

60 ml (1/4 cup) white wine or water

100 grams peas (fresh or frozen)

150 ml fresh cream

grated parmesan cheese for serving

For the pasta, combine 2 eggs with 200 grams of the flour to make the ‘paglia’ egg dough. For the ‘fieno’ spinach dough, combine the other egg with the pureed spinach and the rest of the flour. Let the doughs rest at least 30 minutes. Cut the dough in half and, working one piece at a time, dust with extra flour and roll through the pasta machine starting on the widest setting and working to the second thinnest setting on your machine. If you have the fettucine attachment to cut the dough, pass the dough immediately through this, otherwise, you can also cut it with a sharp knife – to do this, leave the pasta sheets to dry out slightly while you finish rolling out all the dough. Dust the pasta sheets very well, then fold several times over themselves until a smaller width than the knife’s lenth and cut into fettucine. Shape the well-floured pasta into little nests or let them dry long (a coat hanger or back of a chair works well for this) until you are ready to cook.

Put a pot of water on to boil the pasta and salt well (1 teaspoon per 1 litre/4 cups of water and calculate enough water to cover well the pasta).

To make the sauce, place the olive oil in a pan and over low heat, add the prosciutto and garlic, and cook for a few minutes, to brown the prosciutto slightly. Add the sage leaves and pour over the wine. Turn up heat to medium and let simmer 2 minutes. Add the peas and cream and cook a few more minutes until the cream has reduced slightly and the peas are cooked but still bright. I like to season with pepper (no need for salt thanks to the prosciutto but if you have little ones that complain about pepper, leave it out) and set aside until the pasta is ready. When the pasta is al dente, drain and immediately add it to the pan with the warm sauce and toss very well. Serve with parmesan.

White Truffle and Wine Culinary Retreat 11-16 November 2020

The pandemic has disrupted everyone’s plans and when we initially mentioned this workshop in January 2020 on instagram, it almost sold out instantly. Now, unfortunately, most of those guests have had to cancel their bookings due to travel restrictions. However, we have decided to keep it open and offer the workshop to a small group who can still make it and who want to experience a warm and casual retreat revolving around truffles and wine in Tuscany’s heart, with all the covid-19 regulations in place of course.

So if you are able to get to Italy this year, please join me and my sommelier husband, Marco Lami, on a highly curated trip to experience our personal favourite food and wine experiences in Tuscany! We have had so many questions and requests about it and, after the success of our last one in November 2019, and are looking forward to sharing this trip with you!

Autumn in Tuscany is magical. It’s misty, it’s perhaps wet, but it is mild and also the best time of year to experience Tuscan cuisine. We will be based in a beautiful restored farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside near San Miniato – Marco’s hometown and white truffle country – where home cooked dinners of the season’s best soups, stews and roasts, with specialties like saffron, wild mushrooms, chestnuts, new olive oil and white truffles, and wine tastings, held at a long table or around the open fireplace.

Our days together will consist of our most favourite things: a combination of trips to beautiful medieval towns, hands-on cooking classes, farm visits, eating out at some favourite places, winery visits and tastings, tasting new season olive oil and even being part of a truffle hunt – a white truffle hunt, no less, one of the most rare and unique ingredients in the world and a specialty of San Miniato. We will cook together and have aperitivo every night together, but for those who prefer a bit of down time and lounging by the huge fireplace with a glass of wine, you can choose to do that too and just join in on the eating part! See below for all itinerary and more details.

Dates: 11-16 November 2020 (5 nights, 5 days)

Location: San Miniato, Tuscany

Cost: from 2,500 euro per person

Highlights:

2 cooking classes with cookbook author Emiko Davies
3 winery visits and 2 wine pairings with sommelier Marco Lami
Truffle hunt and visit to San Miniato to explore the wonderful food shops
Olive harvest experience and guided olive oil masterclass with an expert from
Saffron harvest experience and a meal at our favourite farm
Truffle dinner in our favourite trattorias
Salumi tasting in our favourite butcher shop
Be immersed in a beautiful, traditional Tuscan farmhouse
Organic, local, slow food and wine

The itinerary:

Day 1: Arrival at the farmhouse in late afternoon. Aperitivo followed by a welcoming dinner together in the farmhouse.

Day 2: After breakfast, a short trip to visit to one of our favourite organic farms in San Gimignano to pick crocus flowers and harvest fresh saffron. A delicious seasonal lunch in front of the fireplace with produce, wine and olive oil all from the farm to follow. After lunch, free time to wander the medieval town of San Gimignano and visit to a local biodynamic winery. Casual dinner back at the farmhouse with wine pairings by Marco.

Day 3: After a relaxed breakfast, we will have a cooking class at the house with Emiko followed by lunch and an olive oil masterclass with an expert – learn how to recognise the difference between a faulty and an excellent olive oil. Time to relax and enjoy and explore the grounds of the farmhouse. Dinner will be  homemade wood-fired pizza (made in the eighteenth century oven) with a wine lesson by Marco.

Day 4: Today will be all about white truffles! We start the day with a morning of truffle hunting. We will visit a biodynamic winery with a wine tasting and nibbles, have a light lunch in a butcher shop with the best view in town and then free time for a stroll through the town to explore all its offerings. Truffle dinner in a local trattoria.

Day 5: Breakfast and then a cooking lesson with white and black truffles, plus a wine lesson with Marco. We can spend the afternoon around the fireplace roasting chestnuts and chatting, answering questions and drinking wine. A casual dinner at the farmhouse for our last night.

Day 6: After a relaxed breakfast we say our goodbyes.

Retreat cost per person: 2,500 euro in double occupancy (single supplement: 400 euro)

What is included in the price:

5 nights accommodation in a beautiful, renovated, private farmhouse
Day trips and all transport in a private van included in the itinerary
Winery visits and tastings
Organic farm visit and saffron harvest experience
5 healthy breakfasts, 4 lunches and 5 dinners, including two typically Tuscan meals out
All wine during meals (and in between!)
Two full cooking classes with a cookbook author
Two wine lessons with a certified sommelier
A white truffle hunt and plenty of white and black truffles for the cooking class
Olive oil masterclass and tasting

Not included in the cost:

Airfare and travel costs to and from the farmhouse
Travel insurance (a must to join the retreat)

The farmhouse:

The house that we will call home during this retreat is a beautiful, traditional Tuscan farmhouse that sits atop 100 hectares of land that include organic olive groves, vineyards, grains, forest and a small farm of chickens, goats and bees, frequently visited by wild deer and pheasants. It is powered by solar panels. There are two floors with 7 bedrooms (each with private ensuite), a wonderful, giant fireplace and communal salon for relaxing in, an eighteenth century woodfired oven, views over the San Miniato hills and a central, long table for sharing meals. It is situated right in between Florence and Pisa, 6 kilometres away from the historical town of San Miniato and on the ancient pilgrim route, the Via Francigena.

To book the workshop:

Email workshops@emikodavies.com with your interest. When booking, please specify if you would like double occupancy (if coming with a friend or partner, please let us know so we can match up the bookings otherwise let us know if you are happy to share with a roommate) or single with the supplement fee – and please do let us know of any dietary requirements. You must have your own travel insurance to participate and because of ongoing travel bans, you will be responsible for checking your country’s travel advisory and its Italian consulate for information on whether you can indeed arrive in Italy safely, with or without a 14 day quarantine (there is some updated information here).

Getting here: Closest international airports are Pisa, Florence, Bologna and Rome. Pisa is the very closest and it is very easy to reach San Miniato by regional train (Trenitalia) from Pisa (it is on the line from Pisa going towards Florence). You can also rent a car from the airport but you won’t need a car during the retreat as we will take care of all transport during the retreat. We can organise transfers from the station of San Miniato for arrival and departure, if needed.

Tuscany in November:

We chose November for this trip because it is our most favourite time of the year. It is calm and the finest Tuscan foods are at their best, including white truffles (we will catch the 50th anniversary of the white truffle festival in San Miniato, read more about it here), freshly pressed, impossibly green extra virgin olive oil (you will never get to taste olive oil like this except this time of year!), harvesting saffron and more. Autumn in Tuscany is beautiful. It can be crisp, clear and sunny or foggy and wet, but it is always spent well with warming foods, wine, roasting chestnuts and traditions like harvesting olives, saffron and truffle hunting.

Your hosts:

Emiko Davies  is an Australian-born cookbook author who has called Florence home for over a decade. She was a restaurant critic for The Good Food Guide in Australia for several years and has written about Tuscan traditions and Italian cuisine on this blog since 2010 as well as for publications such as Saveur, The Guardian, Conde Nast Traveler, Financial Times, Gourmet Traveller and Corriere della Sera, to name a few. She has written three cookbooks  on regional Tuscan cuisine.

Marco Lami, is a certified sommelier and has worked with Australia’s top chefs, including Neil Perry at Rosetta, George Calombaris at The Press Club and Andrew McConnell at The Builder’s Arms/Moon Under Water. He was the head sommelier at Michelin-starred Il Pellicano and is currently the sommelier at Il Palagio at Florence’s Four Seasons Hotel. He was born in San Miniato, home to Tuscany’s precious white truffles, so you will truly experience this part of the visit through the eyes (and tastebuds) of a local.

Things to note:

The retreat will take place with a minimum of 6 and maximum of 10 participants and social distancing (1 meter) will be observed.
Guests will sign a certificate before arriving confirming that they do not have any covid symptoms; guests should also bring their own masks or we will supply disposable ones.
The itinerary is a guide; we reserve the right to make changes in case of bad weather or unforeseen circumstances where we may need to change the order of activities or replace some of the activities with something equally wonderful.
Retreat cost per person: 2,500 euro in double occupancy (single supplement: 400 euro).

To book now please email workshops@emikodavies.com

Grottaglie, a ceramic lover’s dream in Puglia

It was serendipitous that I read Patience Gray‘s recipe (which is more of a description of this beautiful summer ritual than actual measurements) for “salsa doppia” (bottled tomato sauce and fresh tomatoes in layers over orecchiette and a shower of pecorino cheese) while visiting Grottaglie in the province of Taranto in Puglia, a small, somewhat unglamorous town that has been known for centuries for its artisan ceramic production. Gray describes the oversized, shallow salt-glaze dishes typical of Grottaglie’s ceramics – a communal serving bowl where the pasta for the entire family was “poured, dressed and then despatched, each member attacking it with a fork.”

I was in Grottaglie with Alice Adams of Latteria Studio, a good friend and food stylist who I’ve worked with on two of my cookbooks, Acquacotta and Tortellini at Midnight. We were doing a workshop together with Saghar Setareh at Masseria Potenti and Alice was leading the group on a day trip to Grottaglie to check out the behind the scenes of her favourite botteghe in the renowned ceramic town. I recognised instantly a stack of the ancient dishes that Gray described in the beautiful ceramic museum-bottega, Casa Vestita, some pieced back together, the large cracks running through them like creases on the palm of your hand.

Later, in Nicola Fasano’s ceramic workshop, I found entire dinner sets decorated, like the hand drawn illustration accompanying Gray’s salsa doppia recipe, with a rooster at the bottom of the plate. It is the symbol of Nicola Fasano’s ceramics, which Franco Fasano started making in the 60s after discovering a collection of perfectly preserved rooster plates that his grandparents had owned. He, too, recounted to me that families used to eat from the same large plate – huge, if you were to feed a family of ten like Franco’s. The image of the rooster, he said, was to trick you into thinking you might be eating more than what was actually on the plate. The dish may not have had chicken – or any meat – in it, but you could see the drawing on the bottom of the plate and imagine it did. A reminder that we eat with our eyes too.

The tradition of these very characteristic dishes from Italy’s deep south is at once practical, nostalgic and beautiful, even the everyday objects. I thought it would be nice for you to hear about what makes Grottaglie so special from Alice, who took me there twice on our trip together. Below you’ll also find my recipe for Patience Gray’s description of salsa doppia, which is from Tortellini at Midnight, perfect for the glut of tomatoes that we have right now in Italy.

ED: What drew you to Grottaglie?

AA: I had been collecting Italian ceramics for a few years and kept turning up – mainly at second hand mercatini — lovely simple terracotta pieces with the stamp CNF [Ceramiche Nicola Fasano] Grottaglie on them.  I worked a bit with a stylist called Emanuela Rota and she had a lot of CNF pieces, all simple plates and bowls with the most beautiful single colour glazes, and perhaps a hand painted line or a textured edge.  I knew that Grottaglie was in Puglia, and already loved the splatter ware that comes from the south, so Grottaglie was on my radar. Then I went back to Australia and turned over one of the green terracotta plates that mum and I had found together in the mid 80s, plates that had seen so many family lunches under the persimmon tree at Jamieson, and there it was again, the CNF stamp. The following June Leonardo (kindly) suggested that we dedicate a day of the family Puglia vacation to a Grottaglie expedition. I was almost nervous as we drove into town. Was I going to be disappointed? Were the workshops going to live up to my high hopes? The town, and the Ceramics Quarter, lived up to all those years of expectations, at every corner there was something to look at; here a terrace with a view over the maiolica tiled dome, here a ramp of stairs with hand painted tiles, over here piles of plates in every hue. Even my travel companions enjoyed it enough to come back for more time in the botteghe after an afternoon dip in the Ionian Sea.

ED: You’re absolutely right, it’s a ceramic-lover’s dream! Can you tell me about the kind of pieces that are really special to Grottaglie’s ceramic tradition, that are instantly recognisable as coming from there?

AA: There are two distinct traditions in Grottaglie; the caposanara or ruagnara, which concentrates on the production of amphorae, kitchen utensils and everyday objects, and the faenzara which concentrated on the more sophisticated world of highly decorated objects in the majolica tradition. The latter are also called bianchi or white wares because of the white glazed base on which they are decorated.  Both of these traditions are alive and well in 21st century Grottaglie. I’m more attracted to the simple workaday objects like the straight sided bowls, which are made up to a metre across and were used for domestic activities like crushing the tomatoes for preserving. And the flat broad plates with the flower dot motif that hark back to the time when families would share a meal from the same bowl. Then there are the decorative pieces like the Pumo, an elegant single coloured glazed cone with feathers, said to bring good fortune, and which are to be found on all the balconies around the historic centre of the town. 

ED: I am absolutely with you on the everyday objects. The flat broad plates you speak about is exactly what this huge bowl of orecchiette below needed — and you had that perfect plate in your collection (thank you)! I am absolutely crazy about the splatterware. What are your personal favourite pieces from Grottaglie?

AA: Before we visited Grottaglie as part of the Masseria Potenti Workshop, you put me onto a post by Carla Coulson that became the next step in discovering Grottaglie [yes! This one, a dream, all of Carla’s favourite addresses].  The Vestita Family have one of the most magical workshops (Bottega Vestita) but also open their villa to share the treasures uncovered when they renovated the property, including Roman floors and a 13th Century chapel, hidden from view for centuries by a medieval oven.  Hundreds of antique ceramics are displayed in a small family museum that runs of the ethereal garden [photos below!], where capers run over Roman columns and huge amphorae climb the walls. In the displays there are countless examples of dining ware, both from everyday and Patrician traditions. Watching the styles change over the centuries is fascinating, as is discovering similarities that have crossed the sea. The curved edges on the 19th century plates have almost the same lines as those of classic Wedgewood plates my mother serves cake on. I later bought a couple of hand thrown plates at Bottega Vestita, glazed in pure white, that echoed the style of the 18th century tableware on display at the museum.  They have made it into lots of photos, including Tortellini at Midnight.  Then I have lots of simple coloured and splattered pieces from CNF that get lots of use, and a very pale pink oval platter that all food looks beautiful on, also from CNF.  The bowls about 15 cm across are perfect for putting over a lump of pasta dough as it rests, they are just snug enough. 

ED: Any favourite shopping tips for ceramics in this area?  

AA:My favourite makers (and at both you can watch the artisans at work if you visit at the right time) are Ceramiche Nicolo Fasano, or CNF, Via Francesco Crispi 6 (ask to see the workshop, it’s up the hill from the shop), and Bottega Vestita, Via Santa Sofia 23. Also Antonio Fasano and Cinzia Fasano, and many others, there are roughly 50 workshops. The Grottaglie Ceramics Museum in the Castle at the top of the Ceramics Quarter is really interesting and full of artifacts from the period of Magna Grecia onwards.  The Casa Vestita Museum if it is open (check their facebook page for planned openings) is incredible.

ED: Thank you Alice! Before the pandemic Alice was hosting some expeditions to the second hand markets in Puglia and more trips to Grottaglie, so if you are passionate about collecting ceramics you will want to keep in touch with her. You can read more about Grottaglie on her blog here. 

Salsa Doppia (Double Tomato Sauce)

Although the ancient custom of eating from the same bowl has now disappeared, Gray’s salsa doppia, which involves layers of homemade, bottled tomato sauce, pecorino cheese, orecchiette (or your favourite short pasta) and just-picked fresh tomatoes (which in her recipe are quickly cooked but I prefer to leave raw), is one worth repeating – I like to do the layering in a pretty bowl to present at the table and then portion out this summery pasta dish into bowls. This recipe was originally published in Tortellini at Midnight (this photograph is by Lauren Bamford, styled by Deb Kaloper and features one of the huge antique Grottaglie plates from Alice’s collection!).

Serves 4

3 ripe tomatoes, diced

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

4-5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 small onion, finely sliced

400 grams tomato passata (puree)

handful of fresh basil leaves

320 grams of short dried pasta such as orecchiette or penne

40 grams pecorino, ricotta salata or parmesan cheese, finely grated

salt and pepper

Combine the chopped fresh tomato with the garlic, about half of the olive oil and a good pinch of salt. Stir well and set it aside to marinate so that the juices are drawn out of the tomatoes.

Put on a large pot of water to boil.

Prepare a tomato sauce by gently heating the onion slices in the rest of the olive oil with a generous pinch of salt. I like to use a wide pan with curved sides and a bit of depth. Over low heat, it should take about 5-7 minutes for the onions to begin to sizzle and soften without colouring – add a splash of water or turn down the heat if they begin to brown. Add the passata together with about 80ml of water and a few whole basil leaves. Season with salt and pepper and let simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes or until thickened. Set aside.

Add salt to the boiling water and tip in the pasta. Cook the pasta until al dente, then drain.

In a large, shallow serving bowl, layer: half of the pasta, half of the grated cheese, the tomato sugo, followed by the rest of the pasta, the rest of the cheese and the fresh tomato mixture with all the delicious juices. Top with as many fresh basil leaves as you please and present it to the table like this. When serving at the table, give the whole thing a bit of a stir so that each portion gets a bit of everything.