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Cetona, Province of Siena, Italy
Extra virgin olive oil producer, cook, recipe writer, pop-up restaurant caterer, insiders tours

Thursday 21 April 2011

Minestrone alla Primavera

Spring is here and with it some of my favourite vegetables.  How about this fresh green soup brimming with asparagus, chicory, fave broad beans, peas and artichokes?  So simple, and so delicious...it just shouts "I'M ALIVE!!"

Ingredients for 4

1 bunch of fresh or wild asparagus
1 bunch of fresh or wild chicory, blanched
2 spring onions, chopped
2 handfuls of shelled fave broad beans
2 handfuls of shelled peas
2 artichokes cut small

Cover the bottom of a soup pan with olive oil and slowly soften the onion.  In another pan cook the chicory for 5 minutes in boiling water and then chop finely once cool. 
To prepare the rest of the vegetables take each asparagus and snap off & throw away the bottom part, peel up the stalk a couple of cms and then cut what's left into 2 cm pieces. Shell the fave beans and peas. Peel the hard outer leaves of the artichokes, cut the heads into quarters, remove the hair from the centre and slice the remaining part quite finely.
Now add all the raw vegetables to the onions and cook for 5 minutes to flavour together.  Cover with water, add salt, bring to the boil, turn down and leave to simmer for 20 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked.  Add in the chopped chicory.
Serve tepid with a good olive oil and some country bread.

Friday 25 March 2011

Pop-up

I haven't abandoned my blog!! 
What I have been doing is lots of cooking for big groups.  As soon as I can work out how I will download some photos from our pop-up restaurant "the 3 disgraces". 
I've also been commuting to Siena to become "food legal". 
I will be back ... with regular seasonal recipes starting next week. 
Watch this space!

Monday 21 February 2011

Lemon curd

Although it's got lots of vitamin C, it's probably very bad for you ... but who cares??  Lemon Curd is the ultimate in nostalgia / comfort food... And right now we have the most unbelievable organic lemons available from our boys in Calabria, so in response to huge demand - let's go for it:

Lemon Curd
zest & juice of 4 lemons
zest & juice of 2 blood oranges
1.5 cups of fine sugar
12 organic egg yolks
1.5 cups of unsalted butter cubed

Make sure you have about an hour available and put on a good CD, it's a long stirring process.

Mix the lemon & orange zests and juice, sugar & egg yolks in a heatproof bowl until well combined.  Stand bowl over pan of simmering water.
Stir continuously with a wooden spoon until the mixture begins to thicken.  DO NOT LET IT BOIL OR IT WILL CURDLE.
Once thick enough to coat the back of the spoon stir another 7-10 minutes, then remove from heat.
Stir in the butter piece by piece. Strain curd with fine strainer into clean bowl or warm sterilized jar.
Cover or seal & store in fridge, will keep for a week or so....think not somehow.  Enjoy on warm buttered (more butter?) toast, yes!

Thursday 17 February 2011

Stir fry with pitta bread

If you like your veg slightly 'al dente' .... stir fry is for you.  Yesterday I wandered over to Damino, my local veg farmer, who said he had next to nothing (due to the frost), and what did I find? A whole host of wonderful veggies: turnip greens, white cabbage, savoy cabbage, carrots, onions, leeks, rucola and of course our lovely cavolo nero (nothing indeed!)...got to be a stir fry I said!

Make the pitta befiore starting the stir fry. Turn oven on to top temperature.  For 4 pitta breads mix 400 g flour, 210 ml water & 1 tsp salt. Knead together & put dough to one side.

Now to the stir fry, and the key here is to line your veg up in order of hardness or cooking time.  So, put oil in the bottom of the wok, maximum flame and in this case start with sliced carrots and cook for a bit, then add sliced onions and leeks & cook for a bit, next the slices of white cabbage...keep stirring over a hot flame.  Then, one at a time, add in turnip greens, rucola and last but not least the savoy cabbage and kale. (I also threw in some lettuce i had left over from lunch.)  You can use pretty much any vegetable, just slice it finely.

Divide the pitta dough into 4 and roll each ball out thinly with a rolling pin. Once the oven has reached temperature put the pittas in one at a time on a tray on baking paper.  They take about 2 minutes each.

Once all the veg is in the pan season with salt and a good soya sauce.  If you want to keep the stir fry as a side dish then serve once everything is cooked 'al dente'.  If you are waiting for the pitta to cook turn off the gas.  When ready to eat turn the heat back on and add in thin slices of seasoned chicken or beef  and serve after 2 minutes.

Tuesday 15 February 2011

Orecchiette con Cima di rape

At this time of year there's not a great variety of vegetables in our area...or at least we need to be a bit imaginative with what there is if we are trying to eat "local".  Right now turnip greens are young and tasty and make a great, if surprising, accompaniment for pasta.  Wash and boil a kilo of greens in salted water.  Once tender, drain the veg and put to one side to cool. Bring the veg water back to the boil and throw in the orechiette pasta.

In a separate pan heat some olive oil and drop in a sliced clove of garlic and a chilli pepper, once the oil is flavoured drop the chopped greens in (you might only use half and keep the others as a side dish for the next day) and mix over a low heat for a good 10 minutes.

When the pasta is cooked stir together with the greens (removing the chilli pepper to avoid any unpleasant incidents) and serve with a drizzle of good oil on top.

Servces 4

1 kg young turnip greens
olive oil
garlic clove
1 chilli pepper
400 g orecchiette pasta

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Chick pea & Swiss Chard soup

Feeds 4

olive oil
1 onion
1 carrot
1 stick celery
half bunch swiss chard
1 potato
250 g dried chickpeas (soak overnight)
tomato puree
salt


Gently fry chopped onion, carrot & celery in olive oil.  Add swiss chard chopped quite finely and cubed potato, coat in oil mix & let sweat for a bit over low heat.  Cover all the veg in water & bring to boil.  Add half the chickpeas mashed (use a vegetable mouli if you have one), and the tomato puree and salt, cook for 30 minutes.  Add in rest of the chickpeas whole, cook a further 5 minutes. Leave to sit for a couple of hours for flavours to fuse before serving warm with toast.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Farro con funghi e salsiccia

Tuesday. Just driven a hundred kms to do my G.A.S. (collective purchasing group) food shopping for the month, plus some.  Visited 3 farms... and a chocolate factory, hee hee. So, guess who's having Vestri's little red chocolate hearts for lunch, in advance of Valentine's day?

I've got no time to cook today so fortunately my neighbour came to the rescue and called me to come and pick up dinner.  Lina is obsessed with quite a few things, but in particular food that nature just hands to us on a plate, like mushrooms, or chestnuts, or fruit for jam... she just can't stand to see them go to waste.  Today it's mushrooms collected from the bases of trees we call "pioppi". She's made a sauce which we're going to have with nutty farro (spelt) grains, yum.

Serves 4

olive oil
garlic clove
1/2 kg mushrooms
2 sausages
750 g tomato passata

Heat the oil, soften the garlic, add in the mushrooms chopped finely.  Take sausages out of their skin and cut sausage meat into little pieces, drop into the pan.  Once sausage meat is no longer red add in the tomato passata and once bubbling turn down the heat.  cook for half an hour.

Once the flavours are well mingled, turn off the heat and serve with any grain (pasta, rice, couscous etc). Today we're having farro grains which take about 15 mins to prepare.

Monday 7 February 2011

Pasta al pomodoro

Okay, it's Monday, and I've got (at least) 3 businesses to run, as well as picking up my life post-2 children with varying degrees of fevery flu...So, today's lunch is the simple yet satisfying pasta with tomato sauce. 

A few tips: the simpler the better, almost.  Just flavour the oil with a chopped onion & a chopped garlic clove. And the tomatoes have to be good. and good does mean either your own, yeah right ... or organic, because believe me we've been where the "Cirio" tomatoes are grown around Naples and if you saw it with your own eyes...stick to organic.

Serves 4
olive oil
1 small red onion
clove garlic
peperoncino optional (if you like it spicy)
350 g passata
350 g pasta

Heat the oil, flavour the oil on low heat with onion, garlic (&optional chilli pepper). Don't burn, once softened throw in the passata, turn the heat high and then as low as possible for 20-30 minutes.  you'll get a really flavoursome tomato sauce to dress any pasta, spaghetti or penne. Serve hot, parmesan optional.
Follow with salad and a good cheese.

Sunday 6 February 2011

Herb & Lemon Chicken

Sunday lunch material.

Feeds 2 adults, 2 kids
1 chicken
herbs
salt & pepper
olive oil
1 lemon

A free-range chicken in the Valdichiana costs €13,00 (and can make 3 meals for a family of 4). Get your butcher (or maybe your farmer neighbour) to cut it up into pieces, keeping all the bits (neck, claws etc for broth). Then you need a good handful of fresh herbs to coat half the chicken in (freeze the other half for another day). This is going to taste soooo good.

Outside I found sage and rosemary, and unexpectedly thyme and lemon thyme (so winter's on the way out...yeah!). Chop everything finely together (a small blender helps), then spread herbs out on a plate and coat the chicken pieces, adding some salt & pepper.
Get the olive oil going in a wok if you have one, throw in the chicken and cook on a high heat with the lid on for 10 minutes before turning over. Another 10 minutes on the other side. Squeeze a juicy calabrian lemon over the chicken, throwing the skins into the mix for added flavour. Turn the heat right down until cooked, another 10 minutes or so.

Serve with basmati rice and salad.

Saturday 5 February 2011

Pasta ai split peas

Split peas are the forgotten pulse. When did you last eat pease pudding hot, or cold for that matter...? They are just so beautifully ... GREEN!

So as a change from Pasta ai fagioli, lets do pasta ai split peas
(Serves 4)
250 g Split peas, put to soak overnight
salt & pepper
good olive oil
garlic & bunch of sage
200 g pasta

You don't have to soak them overnight, but for this recipe I do. Change the water in the morning and boil for half an hour with some salt, a glug of oil, a clove of garlic and a bunch of sage. Leave to one side til you're ready for lunch. Bring the peas back to the boil (they will practically disintegrate) and throw in a handful of pasta per person. Taste for salt. Serve with a good extra virgin olive oil, some freshly ground black pepper and garlic bruschetta. Wintery good.